If you hold a budget in the NHS you are responsible for it especially when its over spent.

One only has to look at the massive over spends in some Trusts to see how far things can go wrong.

However my problem is that the budget has been cut with no consideration of what it means to the service.

Lee

Lee
Yes I agree that if you are a budget holder you should be responsible for the expenditure within that budget.
However, the rest of your post highlights part of the problem.
There are massive overspends in some Trusts, which means that there has to be under spends in other areas to balance the books and ultimately cuts. As I said initially, there is only a finite budget in the grand scheme of things and any argument about departmental budgets are insignificant and a hospital should be able to run a range of services without bickering about who "owns" what equipment.
As I also said, the emphasis should now be on Value for Money and Efficiencies. It is a fact that finance has doubled to the NHS under Labour, however, efficiency has decreased. In addition, next year there are going to be cuts of up to 15% in the overall budget available, but the same services will be expected.

What, so we can expect the same inefficiencies ... but they will cost us 15% less? That sounds like a bargain to me!

Geoff (cynical as ever),
Using logic it would seem that if the budgets are cut, then efficiency will go up! As a doubling of budget in 12 years has resulted in a decrease in efficiency of 4% overall, then a 15% cut in budget will result in an increase of 1% in efficiency.
If only!!!