Shropshire health group: 'We need to be brave and go public on cuts'

Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group's current deficit stands at £19.4 million – a deterioration of £12.2 million from the planned deficit of £7.2 million.

The CCG is currently forecasting an in-year deficit of about £26 million "without any mitigating actions being taken". It says it needs to make dramatic cuts – but has yet to reveal where those savings will come from.

At a meeting of the group at Shrewsbury Town Football Club Julian Povey, clinical chair of Shropshire CCG, said: "We have a whole list of areas we are looking at as part of the decommissioning exercise and we need to make that public and see what people think to help us with our decisions.

"So far this has all been kept internal but we need to be brave and start engagement and consultation. We also need a timeline to work to."

Andrew Nash, chief finance officer, said: "The CCG is spending more money than is available. That money must be paid back.

"We need to save £12 million to get to our control total. We are currently borrowing money that we need to pay back.

"Time is running away – we are now in the second part of the year. We need to take urgent action and cut our spending now."

The meeting comes after David Evans announced he will leave his post as leader of Shropshire CCG this week. He had been brought in as an interim accountable officer in April following serious concerns about finances.

Mr Evans said: "The real challenge is we need to look very carefully and check we are only paying for what we should.

"We need to take urgent action to address the problem and also create a long term transformation which provides the best value.

"The scale of the problem is significant and we need to take steps to address this.

"We need to be pro-active rather than reactive. For example with falls, we should put a plan in place before the fall happens. Also 50 per cent of people taken to A&E are never admitted so there must be more we can do with services to prevent patients going to A&E.

"Another area to look at is prescribing. Paracetamol costs 16p in the supermarket but on prescription it is about £10 – is that a good way of spending taxpayers' money?

"We think in Telford & Wrekin that costs us £100,000 a year. We need to have a different conversation with people to make them aware of this cost."

Mr Evans said because of the scale of cuts, the board will need to go to public consultation.

He said: "The scale of some of the things we need to do means we will need to carry out a public consultation.

"This is a lengthy process so we need to start getting these lined up now so they start making savings early on next year.

"We will bring a piece to board next month."