Shropshire NHS trust says it is on track to cut deficit
Hospital chiefs in Shropshire today said they were on track to reduce their multi-million pound deficit – as the spotlight fell on the NHS's nationwide £22 billion "black hole".
Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust has steps in place to cut its deficit to £14.7 million by the end of the month.
Measures taken at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford's Princess Royal Hospital have included using fewer agency staff and recruiting more staff nurses, including some from abroad.
It comes after a report from the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee claimed there is no "convincing plan" in place for the NHS to find £22 billion in efficiency savings by 2020/21.
Neil Nisbet, finance director at SaTH, said: "At the start of the year, the trust was forecasting a deficit of £17.2 million.
"We have since been presented with a stretch target by the NHS Trust Development Authority of reducing that deficit to £14.7 million.
"We are currently forecasting that our deficit at the end of the financial year will be £14.7 million and I would like to thank colleagues across the trust for their hard work in helping achieve this whilst maintaining the care and safety of our patients."
In December the first group of nurses recruited from the Philippines started work at Princess Royal Hospital in Telford following nine other new recruits in October and November.
But the report released by the Public Accounts Committee yesterday said the financial health of NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts has "significantly worsened in the last three financial years", with some acute hospital trusts "at crisis point".
NHS England said that a lot of this could be down to spending on temporary staff and said that some agencies had "taken advantage of the situation to charge 'rip-off' fees".
The Department of Health argued that "no-one had foreseen the scale of 'exploitation' by agencies".
Meanwhile, Dr Mark Porter, chair of the British Medical Association council, urged George Osborne to use today's Budget to stop the NHS heading to "financial ruin".
