Month: November 2010

So – Hinchingbrooke NHS Trust has gone down the plug-hole. Privately controlled vultures have been circling over-head – Hinchingbrooke’s demise has been long fore-told – and, neatly enough, it was the circling Circle Health Ltd who have been allowed to swoop down and pluck the entrails of the Trust from the clutch of the drains. We now have, Circle say, the ‘first franchised NHS trust’. NHS East of England, the SHA ‘overseeing’ the deal, was far more upbeat. ‘History was made today’ was their clarion call, as a ‘groundbreaking’ deal secured a ‘bright future’ for the debt-laden Trust.

Now there are some who say that this is privatisation. In fact it is not – yet. The ‘balance sheet assets’ – beds, bricks and mortar etc – remain, we are told, in NHS ownership, and the staff, we are told, will be seconded on NHS terms to Circle. Instead of privatising the Trust, Circle have been given the franchise to run the hospital – and the franchise model is not a privatisation model.

A program on Radio 4 alerted Dr No to new developments in the world of MBAs. Shocked by the public backlash against MBA graduates for their part in shafting the developed economies, a group of 2009 Harvard Business School alumni have borrowed from Hippocrates to conceive the MBA Oath, an ‘inspiration and accountability tool’, to guide MBA graduates through the business jungle.

Putting aside a natural tendency to view the prospect of MBA graduates taking an ethical oath as more hypocritical than Hippocratic, the accompanying book is still thought provoking. Amongst other things it introduces the idea of the ‘MBA mind’ – that cut throat, greed-is-good brain that powers the suits in their relentless pursuit of profit – not, of course, that the authors word it that way.