DOCTORS are highly regulated, but what about NHS managers? Not so, but some think they should be.
Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, wants the regulation to include powers to ban managers from working in healthcare, reports Health Service Journal (Jan 31). His call follows the revelation that Rose Gibb is involved in a healthcare consultancy offering management services. Gibb left her job as chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust days before the publication of a damning Healthcare Commission report into outbreaks of Clostridium difficile. She is reported to have rejected a £75,000 payoff and to be asking for twice as much.
Resolve HealthcareConsulting Services is based at the home of Gibb and Mark Rees, her partner . Rees, the managing director of Resolve, quit his own chief executive job at Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust with a £170,000 payoff days before Gibb’s departure.
Dr Fielden says: “The medical profession believes there should be similar strong regulation of management as there is of the medical profession. Managers are not subject to the same degree of scrutiny as doctors and the NHS code of conduct for managers is practically never appended to management contracts and rarely implemented.”
An Institute of Healthcare Management spokesman says there is nothing to stop Gibb setting up a consultancy, but adds: “In a sector where one’s reputation is so important, she may find that her high-profile departure from her former trust and the subsequent intervention from the Health Secretary means that there may be few takers for her services.”
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The HSJ story did not have a comment from Gibb, but says Rees declined to discuss her role in the company.