TRANSPARENCY is a word bandied about a lot in the NHS boardroom, or ‘bored-room’ as I tend to call it. Yet, after five years of going to NHS meetings, I still find some of what is said about as clear as mud.

Fortunately, there are people like Stewart Messer, the new chief operating officer at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

He has a natural talent for explaining the complex inner workings of the NHS without making a simple soul like me feel like a drooling idiot for asking a question.

He took the trouble to explain to me the impact of the winter diarrhoea and vomiting bug norovirus on our hospitals.

Another recent addition to the boardroom is Professor Julian Bion, a man with a mind as sharp as a lancet.

He is clever enough to know that the test of understanding is to be able to explain something simply to someone else (without, I hasten to add ‘dumbing down’ or patronising his audience).

His speech is refreshingly free of the jargon that infests the NHS as a maggot might a mouldy apple.

If Chris Tidman, the trust’s deputy chief executive and director of resources, can make me understand NHS finances, he must be good.

He once described NHS finances as like trying to land a jumbo jet on a postage stamp.

The NHS locally seems to be freeing itself of the jargon that encumbers it and befuddles ordinary, non-medical people like myself.

This can only be a good thing for patients, families, the public and the Press.

Yet every so often the NHS reverts to its default setting when the NHS chiefs sit like feudal barons under siege, safe on their boardroom thrones.

During the joint services review, for example, the press team declined to mention the crucial fact that clinical leaders favoured centralising A&E, obstetrics and paediatrics at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester, leaving the future of these services at the Alexandra Hospital in doubt.

A vague statement was released in October which skilfully avoided telling the Press or public anything much at all.

It’s too strong to call this a lie. But it is certainly not a lesson in transparency.

I was always told that before you use a word like transparency you should, at the very least, have some idea what it means.