Deconstructing the Welfare State: Managing Healthcare in the Age of Reform [Hardcover]

Preface: The Highest Law  1. Deconstructing the Welfare State: Undoing One of the Greatest Achievements in History?  2. Deconstructing the NHS: The Changing Roles of Junior and Middle Managers  3. Exploring NHS Work: A Critical-action Perspective  4. Ready to do Business: Management and Organizational Change in an Acute Trust  5. Contested Culture: Managerial Work in an Ambulance Trust  6. Staying Afloat: Negotiating Change at a Mental Health Trust  7. When Organizations Disappear: Deconstructing Management at a Primary Care Trust  8. Managing the Impossible: The Challenges of Organizational Change in the NHS

This book explores the daily realities of working life for mid-level managers in the UKs NHS and critiques the movement towards a healthcare model, based around HMO-type providers such as Kaiser Permanente, that is well-known internationally but is often considered far from 'best practice' when it comes to patient care.

This book represents an impassioned indictment of the misapplication of business principles to healthcare in the NHS. It offers a dystopian peek into the lived experience of dedicated health professionals struggling to maintain their professional integrity and a national institution in the face of a disturbing tension between business imperatives and ethics of care.