These health care companies, well, they behave as if they were … companies?

COMMENT: These healthcare companies, well, they behave as if they were … companies?

It quickly becomes embarrassing when David Brent, the head of the paper company Wernham Hogg, has to defend his below-average managerial decisions. The cheesy documentary “The Office” made Ricky Gervais a superstar, and took pillow television into its golden age.

David Brent’s problem is that he makes bad choices. The explanations he concocts afterwards are so embarrassing that you struggle to watch. He just says a lot of stuff in the hope that it will blow over.

I get that feeling when I read the explanation of why 80 employees in Helse Vest will have the most expensive office premises in Stavanger.

In addition, I wonder if they bear the impression that for over 20 years they have been told to be companies, and therefore behave like companies.

The system, baby, the system!

Kill me slowly, just not with the healthcare company model, you might be thinkingFredrik Solvang once said in Debatten, and continued:

But if I say chairmen on million salaries, health as a shop, and hundreds of faceless health bureaucrats, then we are talking torchlight processions, protests and bunad guerrillas.

Now we can add … and the city’s most expensive offices!

O-la-la! Send the popcorn!

Since 2002, parts of the healthcare system have resembled toothpaste factories, oil companies, furniture stores and other limited companies. They have been enterprises. Are you hanging in there? Good.

This should lead to better use of the money in the health care system. Efficiency, you know, modeled on the private sector, which are the only ones that are efficient.

The road to Helsikke is paved with good intentions, and here the intentions were the very best.

Black health holes

One of the problems with the health care system is that it potentially is a bottomless sinkhole, a black hole that sucks up all the world’s money, and there will always be a need for more. Once we have fixed all the serious, we can tackle the fairly serious, the slightly serious, the semi-important, the less important and so on. Even in the healthcare system, there must be some form of control over the money. In a future where more people will use the healthcare system, but not the same number of people will work there, it will be even more important to have what is called cost control in the business world.

But standing on the outside of this being right now, it’s pretty weird. We can’t build a whole new hospital because … the hospital is in the red? Oh well? Should the hospital do things like this that are profitable?

Then comes Helse Vest with an absolutely excellent hook on itself. They rent into the district’s most expensive and most beautiful office building, in the middle of the smøraua, on the dairy itself, in K8, this new building which has not yet won any architecture awards, but has record rental prices. There, the health bureaucrats will sit and scout over Bredevannet while they administer the company’s health.

Mombojombo

The explanation from Per Karlsen (CEO) and Bente Aae (Communications Director) at Helse Vest was not impressive. After a bit of communication mumbo-jombo (acknowledge the discussion, important debate, everyone is equally important, skilled employees, blah-blah-blah) they write about sustainability, teamwork, collaboration across borders and that they are … busy with having as lean and efficient an organization as possible with us.

They have even reused some furniture, we are told.

Yeah? Do they want a diploma for it?

That’s not the point. The central issue is whether Stavanger’s most expensive office space is a sober use of tax money. The answer is a resounding no.

When a section of the public sector is told to be a company, a company, they may start to behave as if they were a company.

And. The. Is. The. Not!

Helse Vest is paid the same amount of tax money as Nav, Hompetitten kindergarten and Hompetatten primary school. Helse Vest does not have its own type of tax money just because it is a company. The new, total rental price is approximately the same as Helse Vest’s for Forus. That deal may not have been very good, and then the move might have been an opportunity to save money. Private companies like this, and the rest of the healthcare system saves everything they can.

Now things are boiling at SUS, because there are doctors, nurses and other foot soldiers sitting in offices who in no way signal … economy, resilience, productivity, collaboration, well-being, availability and that there should be sufficient both open office landscape and closed office.

My tax money

Let me hasten to say that the 80 employees we are talking about are not bad people. Helse Vest is not run by evil, stupid, incompetent devil worshippers, as far as I know. But in this matter, the top commanders have made a very unmusical choice, and there has been no shortage of warnings.

The public doesn’t have to be crazy, but they must be sober. The sustainability they should thinking about is not about reusing furniture, but the trust that Helse Vest uses the tax money in a sober way. The Helse Vest tops do not have a good answer to people like superiors Tilde Broch Østborg and Anne Kristoff.

– I am shocked and very annoyed. This is a completely shameless use of tax money, said Broch Østborg to Aftenbladet.

Hmm. Exactly.

It was a political decision that the healthcare system should be governed according to toothpaste factory principles. For us who are users, not customers, of this system, we who stand and look at the construction of the new SUS and these expensive office premises, we wonder if it was wise to create an enterprise out of the healthcare system.

For now they behave a bit like companies, like private companies, in expensive offices, while the rest of the company saves on absolutely everything. Then comes David Brent explanations about sustainability.

That’s not enough.