What Does a Patient Experience Manager Do?
If you think American administrative costs are high, consider this. NHS Blog Doctor has an informative post on the kinds of jobs that proliferate in the British National Health Service (NHS). There are Equality & Diversity Managers, Patient Experience Managers, and Spiritual & Pastoral Care Managers, all of whom earn “higher salaries than, for example, junior hospital doctors and experienced ward nurses.”
The job description for a Patient Experience Manager? “Work with the Head of Patient Services to embed patient experience metrics as an integral part of performance management across the Trust.”
The same job ad asks “Are you passionate about improving the experience of all our patients and carers? The Trust must put the patient and their [sic] carers at the centre of all we do.”
Does the NHS exist for the benefit of those that they are supposed to serve or the benefit of those that they employ? Judging from this job ad, at least one NHS hospital cannot make up its mind on that point.
These British job descriptions sound awfully similar to some of the “deputy assistant undersecretary” government jobs we commonly see in the U.S.
And we can expect more of these types of government jobs if the Congress is successful in taking over the health care sector of the economy.
Speaking of do-nothing jobs. Apparently, some Members of Parliament are growing weary of the NHS funding homeopathy. The theory behind homeopathy involves diluting substances in water over and over until there’s virtually no active ingredient left. The diluted substance is then administered like a placebo. There are currently four homeopathic hospitals in Britain. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8524926.stm
Sounds very bureaucratic to me.
Doesn’t sound like they have low administrative costs.