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NEWS
NHS finance directors pessimistic about health service finances
hitting A&E waiting time targets – 5% of patients spent four or more hours in A&E over the quarter, the highest level at this time of year for a decade.
Hospital treatment for inpatients and cancer treatment also missed waiting time targets, despite £930m of additional government funding to improve waiting times and ease pressures in A&E.
A new report from the King’s Fund highlights the pessimistic outlook of NHS finance directors, with a “challenging winter” forecast.
In a survey conducted for its latest quarterly monitoring report, 91% of trust finance directors said they were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ pessimistic about the financial state of the health and care economy in their area over the coming year – the highest level recorded since the
survey began in 2011.
Nearly half (47%) identified staff morale as one of their top three concerns, twice as many as in the previous quarter. This will cause significant concern, given the close link between staff engagement and quality of care.
The other top concerns were delays in patient transfers, which have increased by 17.5%, and
Nearly 40% of trust finance directors are forecasting a deficit by the end of the year, again the highest proportion since the survey began. Worryingly, nearly 60% are also concerned about whether their trust will be able to meet its cost improvement target for the current year, suggesting that it is getting more difficult to find efficiency savings. CCGs have a more optimistic outlook,
with around 70% of CCG finance leads surveyed expecting to end the year in surplus. It remains to be seen whether these surpluses will be enough to balance the predicted overspend among NHS providers. King’s Fund policy director
Richard indicates Murray that said:
“The number of trusts forecasting deficits
financial
problems are no longer confined to a small number of organisations and are now endemic across the health system.”
A Department of Health spokes- person said: “We know the NHS is under pressure but the vast major- ity of people continue to be seen and treated quickly.
“We’ve increased the NHS budget by £12.7bn over this Parliament and expect NHS trusts to have a strong grip on their finances.”
8 | national health executive Nov/Dec 14
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