When money is not the answer to Healthcare

When researching the Heathrow Terminal 5 project story, I came across the word 'Projectitis'. The implication there was that large projects were just inherently too difficult and complicated ever to go smoothly. In fact there is a working paper from the King's Fund in UK called Projectitis which addresses a different issue.
The King's Fund is a charitable foundation concerned with improving health and health care. It carries out research, policy analysis and development activities by working independently, in partnerships and through funding.
The working paper is part of a series with the general theme of Whole Systems Thinking. It discusses the problem of funding large, complex projects in the highly political field of public health. It uses the example of a collaborative learning project aimed at finding new ways of spending development money to improve health services for the elderly.
Among the problems the authors describe are:

• The small project team is separate from the many thousands of people delivering the services on a regular basis. To the thousands - at all levels - the project is seen as a distraction from the 'real work' and no artefacts of value to them will be delivered as a result;
• Project philosophy is better suited to delivering concrete objectives that can be scoped out at the outset;
• Project teams need the support of those who command resources - and these people need to be convinced of the benefits that will result. But the political funding cycle forces a rapid execution cycle with not enough time for solid results to be achieved;
• The project goal is frequently based on political rather than practical motives. The incentive for the project team is rather to be visibly entrepreneurial rather to deliver a solid result.

The closely reasoned paper goes on to describe the difficulty of defining, funding effectively, executing and consolidating results of projects in such a complex environment. The conclusion, and the authors' reason for coining the word 'Projectitis', is that funding of projects like this need longer timeframes for funding and more solid objectives.