Telford health commissioners face 'challenging' year
The organisation which buys health services for people in Telford is heading into its 'most challenging year' to try to balance the books, its chief finance officer has said.
Telford & Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group's governance board approved its financial plan for 2019/20 at a meeting yesterday.
A report to the board said Telford and Wrekin CCG was intending to submit a balanced financial plan, however there is a risk it won't achieve its target.
The CCG needs to make £10.6m in savings in 2019/20, but it is not yet known how £4m of that sum will be achieved.
Currently there is a potential gap of £4.9m in its Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) savings plan for the next financial year.
But Jon Cooke, chief finance officer, told the board that schemes were being developed to bring that down to £4m.
Mr Cooke said: "This is the most challenging year we've experienced to go in with this level of unidentified QIPP."
Risk
He said he hoped the CCG could identify further efficiency programmes so it did not have to use its reserves to cover some of the risk.
The report to the board said: "This position clearly represents a high risk for the CCG in 2019/20 and we continue to work both within the CCG and across the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) to identify mitigations to reduce this risk.
"It is clear that we will not be able to close this gap in isolation and the work across the STP in developing transformational change programmes will be essential in delivering the required savings.
"We will continue to provide the governing body with regular planning updates to provide assurance on the progress being made to bridge the gaps in the finance plan."
Within the 2019/20 financial plan, £131.9m is earmarked for acute care, £22.3m for mental health and £34.8m for primary care.
Now approved, the plan will be submitted to NHS England.
