The NHS is in no way run by anything even resembling corporations, come on. The fact that they use job titles taken from the private sector is irrelevant - lots of places in the civil service do that. All you've done is describe the names they use to refer to different departments of the government.
I mean your whole post seems confused about what the private sector actually is. A government department doesn't become private sector because it gets money from charities!
As for accountable, read the full article and see what NHS accountability looks like. It looks like nothing. "Lessons must be learned", indeed!
> The NHS is in no way run by anything even resembling corporations, come on.
What? Of course it is. This hospital trust has its own budget, it has a board of directors, they're not controlled by local government, they're not controlled by central government, they're not controlled by civil servants, they're accountable to their local population before central government. Here's their annual report from 2020/2021. https://www.kch.nhs.uk/Doc/corp%20-%20684.7%20-%20annual%20r...
What's the difference between the chief executive of an NHS Foundation Trust and the chief executive of any other corporation?
You seem to think this hospital is controlled directly by the Department for Health and Social Care, and that's simply incorrect.
I've written a more detailed and thoughtful reply that covers this to your other post, but briefly, from your document:
"On 2 April 2020, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England and NHS Improvement announced reforms to the NHS cash regime for the 2020/21 financial year. During 2020/21 existing DHSC interim revenue and capital loans as at 31 March 2020 of £735m were extinguished and replaced with the issue of Public Dividend Capital (PDC)"
The NHS is a government department as are all aspects of it. These organizations rely near totally on taxpayer funding, therefore, they are a part of the government. The fact that they claim to be independent is meaningless obfuscation and frankly the prevalence of this practice throughout the UK government is an indictment of the public sector culture there.
The idea they are independent of central government is especially bizarre. Read the report:
"Following a financially challenging 2017/18, the Trust was placed in Financial Special Measures on 11 December 2017 for breach of its NHS Provider Licence, having been in enhanced oversight for some years before that. Enforcement undertakings were issued in February 2018 and updated in
August 2018."
They were placed (by the government) in "special measures" because they aren't a real company and therefore cannot just go bankrupt like a real company would, this happened because they breached their (government issued) NHS license, and therefore enforcement undertakings were issued (by the government).
These are government controlled bureaucracies being held to account by other parts of the government. They are certainly not independent of that government at any level, nor are they in any way directly accountable to the people using their hospitals.
Given your familiarity with NHS jargon I have to wonder if you work for the NHS, or at least very closely with it. If so, is this belief that the NHS somehow isn't the government widespread?
You're using a definition of "run by the government" that is both bizarre but also does not fit the NHS.
This belief that the NHS is not run by the government isn't a belief, it's fact, as you'd know if you'd read the legislation.
Your comments about putting a trust into special measures - not allowing it to go bankrupt - has nothing to do with it being run by the government or not, it's about protecting patients. There are plenty of providers of NHS services that do go bankrupt.
It's okay that you don't understand the NHS - it's a complex tangle of organisations. It's less okay that you insist that your poor understanding is The Truth. Genuinely weird that you accept that I know more about the NHS than you, but on this one point I must be wrong.
I mean your whole post seems confused about what the private sector actually is. A government department doesn't become private sector because it gets money from charities!
As for accountable, read the full article and see what NHS accountability looks like. It looks like nothing. "Lessons must be learned", indeed!