BMA: NHS staff being held back by bureaucracy

The British Medical Association (BMA) has raised concerns that excess red tape is having a negative impact on NHS care quality.

A survey released by the BMA to coincide with the start of its annual representative meeting showed that 89 percent of doctors faced barriers or obstacles when attempting to make service changes or improvements in the last year.

Recurrent impediments include a lack of time and capacity, financial constraints, insufficient managerial support and too much bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, Dr Brian Keighley – chairman of the BMA in Scotland – stated in a speech at the conference that a culture of "managerialism" has arisen within the NHS, thereby distorting patient care priorities.

He stated that too much of doctors' time is taken up by form-filling and box-checking, while expressing worry over managers operating in service of top-down politically-inspired targets.

Dr Mark Porter, chair of the BMA Council, noted that the government wants "to give doctors more control so they can work effectively for their patients, yet they often find this impossible in the face of an unprecedented funding squeeze, inadequate staffing levels and rising patient demand".