THE embattled health trust which runs Bridlington and Scarborough Hospitals is already more than £1m in the red this financial year.
Five months into the financial cycle Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare trust's board was told today that progress towards a £5m "cost improvement" plan was "unacceptably slow in some areas".
The trust, which is about to carry out con
troversial plans to move the cardiac monitoring unit and acute services from Bridlington to Scarborough, says it still believes it can end the year £1.9m in the black.
But its report to the trust's board added: "The year end forecast will not be achieved unless the trust implements further stringent control on expenditure and the delivery of savings targets."
Part of the overspend has been put down to using agency staff to cover the trust's 119 vacancies because of recruitment difficulties.
The trust has had tumultuous year, following its decision to downgrade Bridlington Hospital. Despite a protest march involving 7,000 people, the Health Secretary Alan Johnson last month decided to press ahead with the changes.
The cardiac monitoring unit is now scheduled to close on October 26, with emergency medicine following on November 12.
Earlier this month the trust was ranked as one of the worst in the country for its use of money for the third year in a row.
A series of financial crises came to a head last year when trust bosses brokered a deal with health chiefs at the strategic health authority to "park" a £20.7m debt.
The trust said yesterday their accumulated deficit was £7.6m which they were paying off over four years at £1.9m a year.
The £1.06m overspend to the end of August represents around one per cent of its total income.
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