£32.6 million Shropshire health deficit could take a decade to clear

A finance and contract report was published ahead of Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group's (CCG) governing body meeting today, which states that by the end of this financial year the CCG will have a £19.4 million in-year deficit.

The report says this totals a deficit of £32.6 million which has accumulated over previous years.

Shropshire CCG's accountable officer Simon Freeman said that the group hopes that the in-year deficit will be zero in three years.

He said: "Our plan this year is to deliver our services.

"Our real focus is on returning the CCG to balance in year. We're having to save £18 million this year.

"We've got a number of major schemes to look at to save that money, one is GP prescriptions."

One of the ways the CCG will save £18 million is stopping some prescriptions and some operations.

Dr Freeman added: "It's about cutting out waste, stopping prescribing things we don't need to prescribe.

"That's going to save approximately £3-4 million this year.

"Another is in continuing healthcare for the generally very old or very ill patients who are end of life or have difficult heath needs.

"We're going to no longer pay for operations that have limited or no clinical value to patients.

"We have to produce a financial recovery plan for NHS England. By three years we're hoping our in-year deficit will be zero. It could be a decade before the £32.6 million is cleared.

"CCGs just get allocated budgets, we can't go and lobby for more money."

The group was rated as inadequate by NHS England in an Ofsted-style rating system earlier this year.

And newly released figures showed that only 73.3 per cent of patients at Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust’s A&E departments had been seen within four hours – below the national target of 95 per cent and national average of 90 per cent.

The waiting times for October were the second worst in the country.

Dr Freeman said this is "unacceptable".

He said: "A&E waiting times are unacceptable in Shropshire, our performance is not very good at all and we're working hard with Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) to get that right.

"We've just appointed a new care director across the system who's joined from the Emergency Care Improvement Programme.

"We've got big hopes that her expertise nationally will help us address some of the problems locally."