I disagree Richard, I am with Louis, while the main thread fizzled out a while back the problem keeps rearing its ugly head.
Over the past few weeks we have had a stream of "salesmen" decending on the hospital promising all sorts of savings and wonderful things if they are given the chance to come in and dismantle an overworked but dedicated team.
Also the highly paid consultant who is no doubt on a percentage of savings for the year bears no responsibility when in three, five, years or whenever its found that it hasn't saved in the long run and the hospital is now stuck with something they cannot get out of.
All my working life I have seen accountants taking the short term savings route only to see that down the line the savings have resulted in the ultimate demise of a group due to shortsighted penny pinching. While balancing the books or showing a profit annualy is the order of the day there will be no change. Whatever happened to speculate (invest) to accumulate.
Until engineering is allowed to be managed by engineers we will see the same old thing of departments frantically spending any monies left at year end, whether they need what they buy or not, and departments where half a dozen expensive units need replacement at once have problems because you are not allowed to carry over monies year on year for such replacement.
I think I have rambled enough.
All power to you Louis If you think it, say it. :p
