NHS trust hit by scandal facing administration

Health regulator Monitor has confirmed it has appointed special administrators to “safeguard the future of health services” provided at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Last year, South London Healthcare NHS Trust became the first ever NHS trust to be put under the care of a special administrator after it began losing around £1.3m a week.

But Mid Staffordshire is the first foundation trust – a supposed marker of excellence in the health service – to face the same fate amid fears it will become unable to pay its debts.

Monitor said that the existing executive team will report to special administrators Hugo Mascie-Taylor, the former medical director at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and restructuring specialist Alan Bloom, of private finance giant Ernst & Young, who will take over the running of the trust today.

A spokeswoman said they would produce a plan for the reorganisation and “sustainable delivery” of health services after it was decided the trust was “neither clinically nor financially sustainable in its current form”.

Monitor said they would be given 45 days to design a way of providing services to patients in the area “that is sustainable in the long term”.

Their plan will face a public consultation and services at the hospitals in Stafford and Cannock will continue to run as normal until a final decision is reached.

Monitor’s chief executive David Bennett said: “We have taken this decision to make sure that patients in the Mid Staffordshire area have the services they need in the future.

“It is now the role of the trust special administrators to work with the local community to decide the best way of delivering these services.”

The trust was at the centre of a public inquiry into the “disaster” at Stafford Hospital where hundreds of patients may have died needlessly after they were routinely neglected.

The Francis Report highlighted the “appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people” between 2005 and 2009.

Both hospitals are likely to remain open in the future but a number of key services including specialist surgery, paediatric inpatient care and maternity care, could be moved to neighbouring units.

Finances at the trust, one of the smallest in the country, are bleak. Last year the Department of Health gave the trust a £20m boost to maintain services.

Mr Bennett described the announcement as the “beginning of the final stage” of the development of a long-term solution to provide services to local people.

Dr Mascie-Taylor said: “We are both massively committed to try to bring about what Monitor have asked us to do – to produce safe and sustainable clinical services for this part of the country.

“Our message to the staff at all levels is that it is business as usual, your employment is unchanged. We want you to carry on, in what are difficult circumstances.

“We absolutely recognise that the staff at the hospital have been in a difficult place for quite a long time and we ask them to continue to be committed to providing the services that they provide.”

Christina McAnea, the head of health at the union Unison, said: “Hospital staff and managers have put many hours of hard work into trying to turn this hospital around after the tragic lapses of care that occurred. Putting this hospital into administration could turn the clock back on these improvements.

“There is money available to bail out banks, there should be money available to bail out vital local services such as hospitals.

“The Government must step in.”