I will tell you now from personal experience that just displaying the NHS logo and the selection of colours you can use in NHS signage has more rules than monopoly and scrabble put together.It would not surprise me in the slightest if signage in a hospital has more rules than monopoly...
Anyone can look this up but one example is that it is “unacceptable” to have the logo over a background such as a photograph that is cluttered, or other colours such as green or red. Then there is the space you have to have around the logo…. Etc.
The NHS like any organisation has a corporate identity that people expect.
Someone might be annoyed at a 6ft blue logo painted on a carpark but the general public would be completely confused at a 6ft logo if it was red and not blue.
So you have build a whole load of new departments and moved all the wards about like most hospitals have in the last 3 years.
You don’t want a theme hospital situation of everyone wandering around the hospital lost and confused, missing appointments and getting angry with staff.
The solution might be some sort of cohesive signage solution. Something designed to get people where they need to go but not cost the earth or waste money on unnecessary signs (signs are really really expensive) you also need to keep to the NHS rules on displaying logos and colour schemes. What the hospital probably needs is someone who can bring all that together, on budget and ok time and ticking all the other boxes.
Hospitals don’t have people like this on staff so they might need to pay an outside (self employed) consultant. Expert firms can get quite expensive but a consultant in any business can be a few hundred pounds a day.
So employing someone to do this job suddenly makes a lot more sense to pay them £300 a day for 3-4 weeks than have them on staff for 12 months a year at £40k a year. When you might only need someone like this every few years…….
Suddenly managers actually make sense.
Also from personal experience there is a lot of waste on the NHS as with every business, but generally managers are needed, it’s managers who make sure you’re not waiting 3 years for an appointment not doctors or nurses. It’s managers who keep the consultants from spending £3,000,000 on a laser that they can use in only 1% of operations or doing a £500 MRI scan on every patient no matter what the problem.
Managers are needed, this applies to every company l, it’s not generally the manager who isn’t needed being the problem but often an under qualified incompetent manger getting a position that’s way out of their depth that causes most issues.
There are many many nurses who get promoted to manager just because of length of service but have zero management experience or skills. Most doctors don’t have the time or inclination to care about anything managers do, they rely on things just being taken care of. The only thing they might manage is junior members of the doctor team