Wednesday 19 August 2009

The NHS

In this one display are these brands: Boots, NHS, NHS camden, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Boots midnight pharmacy, PAGB, The havens and Macmillan cancer trust. Seems that while the debate rages at a systemic level (that is where politics lives after all), it is easy to loose sight of the day to day consequences of these discussions.


I love the NHS, and I am a 'heavy user' so to speak, and so can see it's flaws clearly too... And one very human level problem was apparent to me during a visit to Boots today - brand story dilution. This photo is one example of the very blurry boundary these days between public and private, between the core offer and the other services, and between who provides which part of your health care. While this is not a new problem, and certainly one that is not easy to fix - it does mean that it is the front line staff, of both the public and private companies that are bearing the brunt of this... dealing with queries that arise from confusing communications such as this must account for a lot of their time.


It seems that in the grand scheme of things, especially as the philosophical debate rumbles on, not loosing sight of the small things is ultimately the thing that most influences the public perception of a very ambitious project.


RT.

Posted via email from rosstimms's posterous

2 comments:

  1. Hey Ross, Thanks for posting that sad face picture ... reminded me your blog was out here! Things are going quite well. Implemented Gift to Work in our first client office this week. It's a nearly paperless office, which presented some challenges for us, as paper is still a big part of communicating the breadth of services we offer, goods we sell, and events we've planned. We've utilised email and the company's Intranet, but still, there are those who just can't be bothered with any form of technology (usually quite important people!), those who feel absolutely uncomfortable with technology (a minority, I think), and those who are so overwhelmed with the number of emails they receive and therefore delete anything that's not from their boss or direct co-workers. So, between reading this blog entry, my experience this week, and my past experience in leaflet hell, I can't stop thinking about this problem. How can we solve it!?

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