"The first week I started the regime the change was amazing. My energy returned, my skin glowed, the aches and pains and heat (inflammation) in my joints went away (almost all), the gastric reflux stopped. People commented on the change in me. I was amazed at how different and positive I felt. So thank you so much." Susie, Plymouth

"I can't speak highly enough of that man, he changed my life". Doreen, Worcester 

October 2010

From the desk of Dr Sam Shohet
BDS MGDS LiAc MBAcC ICAK 

NHS Plc – The Only Way Forward

Have you ever considered why the NHS, this colossus of a business which is the second biggest employer in the world, was doomed to failure from the outset and why it will continue to fail unless we recognise the core problem and act to rectify it?

A Sound Business Model

Anyone who has watched The Apprentice - the reality TV programme where Lord Sugar puts applicants through a series of projects and tasks to choose a finalist who will be given a post in his organisation – would have realised that the applicants from all walks of life and diverse business backgrounds and experience, shared one thing in common: they first and foremost got to know their PRODUCT.

Anyone who has followed the biographies of the entrepreneurs on Dragon’s Den:
Theo Paphetis, James Caan, Duncan Bannatyne, Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones, will immediately recognise that the first thing they did  when they started their businesses was first and foremost to get to know their PRODUCT. Then they set out to devise a business plan around that product to make it successful.

NHS Plc

As it happens the product in healthcare is human health and the flaw in our NHS business model is the fact that our chairman, board of directors and managers have no idea about their product, how it works or even the bare essentials of the different components and how they all fit together, what makes it better and what makes it worse, what other market forces affect its success and failure and so on.

I am not for one moment expecting the board to be able to do brain surgery but they should at least have a pretty sound idea of the basics of how the body functions. I can't imagine that Lord Sugar knew how to put a computer together when he founded Amstrad but I am sure he knew how to turn it on and off, the different components needed and how they interacted together. If he needed something special then he would employ an electronics engineer, in the same way our board would employ a brain surgeon to do the technical stuff.

I know you are going to tell me that the experts, the doctors, the dentists, the opticians etc. should already know all that stuff and that should be enough. Yes you are probably right but remember they are only experts in their field and they go to university to learn their trade in more detail, but they still rely on the board to have a broad knowledge of how the business should function and what is required to make it become successful.

Get to Know Your Product

The chairman, in this case the Health Minister, right across to the movers and shakers and the policy makers, the board of directors, in this case the secretaries and the managers, are eventually accountable to the shareholders, in this case the electorate who are also the owners of the product. And for this very reason they should ALL get to know as much as possible about their company’s product.

Only then will it be possible to run NHS Plc as a viable business and turn all our fortunes, as shareholders, around; not only in terms of health but also in quality and cost.

With warm regards

Sam Shohet

For more information:
01483 522133

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