Shropshire health group forecasts extra £5 million overspend - but vows not to cut services

Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) had set a budget based on a financial plan for 2019/20 that did not meet its control total of £12.3m.

The initial plan submitted showed a forecast deficit of £22.9m but now bosses are estimating an overspend of an extra £5m on top of that.

The CCG is seeing significant cost pressures in the acute sector, particularly in musculoskeletal medicine, mental health, physiotherapy and emergency admissions.

Dr Julian Povey, chairman of Shropshire CCG, said: "At the moment we are spending more money than anticipated on healthcare but we have a plan to bring the spend back down in line with that it should be.

"There is a gap where we will spend £23m more than we were allocated. We are now expecting to spend £5m more than that over the year.

Difficult

"There is many things we are looking at our spending on, including musculoskeletal medicine. But we have plans to work with our colleagues and providers to reduce that spend.

"We will be asking the board on Wednesday if there's anything more we should be doing and looking at."

Accountable officer David Stout said the CCG will not cut services in order to make the necessary savings.

He said: "The growth in the number of emergency admission is way over what we targeted for. We've seen a nine per cent growth year on year. We had planned for more like four to five per cent.

"We're forecasting that we can bring ourselves back to budget. It will be a distinctly difficult job and it's going to be really challenging.

"However, we won't be making cuts in services to achieve that goals. I can reassure people that we are not going to make cuts.

"We've identified more efficient ways to deliver care. We will do this in the right way."

The finance report will go before the Shropshire CCG governing body meeting on Wedneday at Ludlow Racecourse.