A Northern PCT found themselves with £60 million invested in 160 new initiatives, and no defined benefits. They invited a team of consultants to "retrofit" a benefits framework.

Hugo Minney was technical lead (the Benefits Management expert) for the team and organised the staff interviews and workshops, and led all of the workshops.

When I arrived in Sheffield in 2004, my first task was to "kill" the ISTC (Independent Sector Treatment Centre) that had been "imposed" on the South Yorkshire SHA by the Blair government.

The local Chief Executives, of the PCTs, of the Teaching Hospital, Children's Hospital and Mental Care Trust, and most of the surrounding Trusts, couldn't see the point.  I went  about it in my usual diligent way,

"Sometimes I hate my work" – so said a nurse to my wife, whilst looking after a friend of ours.
How can someone been such a caring profession get to feel this way? Surely, seeing sick people is enough to bring those feelings of compassion that they felt 20 years before, when they made the decision to become a nurse?
 
So what should we do?

Key performance indicators (KPI), targets by another word, seem to be here to stay.

In the commercial world, they may be self imposed: budgets, forecasts, sales targets, the expectations of the city. In services for the public good, the government creates the targets. For example in health, there are 698 targets that align with Standards For Better Health[1], and another 166 that don’t[2]. In addition to these, we have QOF, activity reporting for enhanced services, and many more.