NHS in £250 million quagmire, chief criticizes trusts |
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Sun, 18 Sep 2005 19:05
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LONDON - Sir Nigel Crisp, the chief executive of the NHS in England has come down heavily on the chiefs of the 156 NHS trusts in the country for overspending, which resulted in a deficit of £250 million in the last financial year.
This figure is worse than the £140 million overspend that was reported to the National Audit Office around three months ago. And this loss happened despite record levels of investment being ploughed into the NHS to make it viable. "Poor financial management in a few organizations can erode public confidence in the management of the NHS as a whole. It is not acceptable for any NHS organization to spend more resources than it has been allocated or received in income," said Sir Nigel in a letter to all the trusts that are in the red.
According to the Department of Health website, almost 11 hospitals on the NHS trust lost more than £10 million in 2004/5 with the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare topping the list. This hospital was £30.6million in the red, a figure that is almost 20 percent of its total turnover. It does not look like a change of guard at the helm would make much difference to the bottom line. Last fortnight, a new chief executive was appointed to manage the trusts and assist in their recovery.
Sir Nigel has proposed several steps to make the trusts cost-effective. He wants trusts to reduce the use of temporary staff, make more use of the NHS's own supply agency and share back-office functions such as finance, human resources and IT. But John Appleby, chief economist of the King's Fund think tank said that hospitals were not able to cut back on their costs even if they held back on patients. He added that this trend was a worrying factor, "It's worrying that individual services are facing large debts and are without the means to meet the rising expectations on them to deliver," he said.
Andrew Lansley, the Conservative spokesman on health, placed the blame at the government’s doorstep, "The Government has been in denial about the extent of the deficit crisis; they have supplied more money to the NHS but lost control of the costs," he said.
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