Shropshire hospital trust in talks about loan after £16m overspend forecast
Health bosses at the NHS trust which controls Shropshire’s two main hospitals are in talks about taking out a loan after forecasting an overspend of £16 million by the end of March next year.
Neil Nisbet, finance director at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, which runs Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, said the trust was having conversations with NHS Improvement.
Mr Nisbet said: “On the basis we arrive at an agreed position what then follows is we are then able to take out a repayable loan to underwrite the scale of that deficit.
“It will want to make sure we are doing everything we can to limit this overspend.”
He said talks had started already between the trust and regional director of NHS Improvement and will continue in January.
During a recent meeting at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, the trust board was told that there had been a significant overspend in agency staff during the first part of the year.
A report to the trust board said that at the end of September, the trust recorded a deficit of £13.4 million – £6.4m worse than planned.
Clive Deadman, chairman of the sustainability committee, told the meeting that the deficit was likely to be £16m by the end of the current financial year.
The trust’s total agency spend for April to August this year amounted to £7.7 million, £2.8 million above the agency cap set by NHS Improvement.
Previously hospital bosses said they spent £16.373 million on agency staff in 2015/16, a figure which is “too high”.
However, recently 42 new nurses started work at both Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.
Health bosses say the new staff will boost the workforce at SaTH and reduce the reliance on agency nurses and temporary staff.
Workforce director Victoria Maher told the trust board that the new nurses were a mixture of newly qualified staff and some had joined from other organisations.
She said that the trust was not actively recruiting outside of the UK at present, but added that as many as 2,000 nursing roles are unfilled across the West Midlands.
