Shropshire hospital trust's finances ‘on track’ but chiefs remain on red alert
Finance chiefs at Shropshire’s acute hospitals trust say they have ‘got to keep the pressure up’ on keeping a tight grip on the purse strings.
Board members of The Shrewsbury & Telford Hospitals Trust (SaTH) heard that they remain in a ‘break-even’ position and this must remain the case or the trust could run out of money to pay the bills.
SaTH is this year allowed a ‘planned deficit’ of some £40 million but the board was told that it must hit its targets, including for its 8,000-strong workforce.
SaTH has already announced that it is looking to reduce its overall number of posts by 150, to help meet its savings target. It was looking at options such as redeployment, not filling vacant posts and reducing hours before it was forced to consider compulsory redundancies.
Richard Miner, who chairs the trust’s Finance Assurance Committee, said the current ‘break-even’ position includes the use of £10.9 million of support.
“The support brings us unto a break-even position,” he said, adding that it was “very encouraging” after the second month of the financial year. The board was later told that this has extended into a third month.
But Mr Miner added: “What does worry me most is the delivery of the workforce plan.”
This, the Local Democracy Reporting Service understands, includes further reductions in the use of agency staff, more effective use of staff rotas, and tackling the root causes of absences.
Mr Miner told the board that if the trust did not hit its financial targets it “runs the risk” of not getting continued financial support.
And if that happens he added that it could become a question of whether the trust would “run out of cash at the end of the year".
“We have got to keep the pressure on, we have got to keep to that plan,” Mr Miner said.
Andrew Morgan, who chairs both SaTH and Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust (Shropcom) said: “We cannot have another year of this trust not hitting its financial plan.
“Not having the cash to pay our bills would be extraordinarily bad.”
The board was told that the second part of the year would be “much tougher” than the first.
