Health trust under pressure isforced to raid £10m crisis fund

HEALTH chiefs have been forced to plough 10m of contingency funding into budgets after hospital admissions in Sheffield rocketed.

New figures reveal an overspend of 11m is forecast for 2010-11 after higher-than-expected demands on services, mainly emergency inpatient care and continuing care in people’s homes.

Managers at NHS Sheffield will be warned at a meeting today that they face a “very substantial challenge” to break even next April.

The worsening position is of greater concern as it comes even ahead of an expected significant tightening of NHS finances due to restrictions on Government spending.

Latest figures show other primary care trusts in Yorkshire are also coming under pressure but the situation in Sheffield is among the most serious and some planned initiatives have already been axed.

A report written by assistant director of finance Martin Colclough shows that a plan to hold back 10m to help tackle the effect of Government cuts has been wiped out.

The crisis fund had already been spent as a result of the financial pressures and warns a further 10m of “efficiencies” may also be required.

NHS Sheffield pays for health services in the city worth nearly 1bn and oversees standards of services but under plans unveiled by the coalition Government it, along with all the country’s other primary care trusts (PCTs), faces the axe, with responsibilities for commissioning care from hospitals set to be passed to GPs.

According to the NHS Sheffield report, many trusts are facing increased demands for care, meaning that they are also unable to put any money aside for crisis management.

Mr Colclough says the situation means NHS Sheffield “will have no reserves to carry forward, which will increase challenges faced in 2011-12 when lower funding is expected”.

He adds: “The greatest area of expenditure pressure is continuing healthcare, with current forecasts showing an 11m, or 25 per cent, overspend despite a 10 per cent increase in the budget for 2010-11.”

NHS Sheffield’s board of directors is being told savings will need to be identified to ensure it remains in the black.

Other areas of the trust’s work which are currently an “overspend risk”, according to the report, are prescribing services, ambulance and patient transport services and mental health.

Julia Newton, the trust’s director of finance, said yesterday: “Because there were more hospital admissions and referrals than ever last year, it meant we had to use all our reserve money to end the year in balance.

“As a direct result, we’ve started this year with less than we needed and despite a five per cent growth in funding, we’re continuing to see an increase in pressures.

“These include a huge increase in care and treatment for people with ongoing needs in their home and emergency admissions to hospital.

“We’re doing a number of things to tackle the 11m potential overspend, including working with our health and social care partners across the city to transform services so that they are more cost effective, reduce hospital stays and offer more care nearer to home.

“We’re also looking very carefully at all areas of NHS spend – from further management cost savings at the PCT, to spends in primary care and hospital care – to see how we can reduce the costs.

“And finally, we’re asking the people of Sheffield to take more responsibility for their own health – something they told us we should do when we talked with them last year in the Big Health Conversation.”

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