NHS trusts facing £2 BILLION deficit, new figures reveal

The amount is higher than the deficit for the whole of the 2014/15 financial year.

Monitor said its latest forecast suggests foundation trusts will end the year with a deficit of about £1bn, which is broadly in line with original plans.

Healthcare watchdog Monitor has warned that “radical changes” are needed as it was revealed that NHS trusts in England accumulated a £930 million deficit for the three months ended 30 June 2015.

The trusts said an overreliance on agency staff created the “primary cause” of the deficit, with foundation trusts spending £192m more than planned on the workers.

“A financial crisis and a staffing crisis combined could cause ongoing chaos for years unless there is an urgent injection of cash”, said Ms Davies.

Monitor said that financial constraints were having a direct impact on patient care, with waiting lists for routine operations reaching 1.9 million – an increase of 169,100 on the year before.

Monitor intervened or agreed regulatory action at 37 trusts (25 per cent of the sector) because of operational or financial concerns.

Foundation trusts provide a wide range of care services to patients to protect their health and well-being.

Prof John Appleby, chief economist of the King’s Fund think tank, said: “These figures will show us just how challenging this year will be”.

Paul Healy, senior economics adviser at the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said: “We want to see £4bn of the government’s £8bn funding commitment available to the NHS within the next two years”.

“Financial problems on this scale can not be explained by individual pockets of mismanagement – we are looking at a systemic problem across the health service”. As we enter the winter period, it is highly likely that patients will wait longer for care.

“The government must now acknowledge it can not continue to maintain standards of care and balance the books”.

Health secretary Heidi Alexander believes that this deterioration in NHS’ finances should be a problem that the government will take seriously, especially since these actions are directly the result of their policies.

Sir Leonard Fenwick, chief executive of Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is the longest-serving hospitals boss in the health service.

Hospital trusts in the Westcountry are on course to rack up total deficits of up to £69million – the “worst” financial situation for a generation. This has also forced the Department of Health to pay as much as they could afford to keep services going, even at below expected cost rates.

It said the report covered the period before new rules were brought in to cap the spend on agency staff. “There needs to be much better workforce planning. This is now urgent as running a £2bn annual provider sector deficit is patently unsustainable”, he added. The following year they handed over £1,294,950.

“Hospitals and other frontline NHS organisations have all-but exhausted their options for becoming more efficient”, he said. They are also increasingly affected by cuts in social care, local GP shortfall and a host of other challenges.

It said trusts had to work to counter an increased demand for care and a “worst in a generation financial position”.

He highlighted that it was now 182 days since Prime Minister David Cameron’s election pledge to inject an additional £8bn into the NHS, but there had not been any confirmation of when this investment will be made. “This extra funding is critically important in order to help plug the severe decline in our healthcare finances, which is at unprecedented levels”, he said.

Meanwhile, Unite’s national officer for health, Barrie Brown, blamed the deficit in the “ruinous and extortionate payments” from private finance initiatives that are “dragging the trusts in England into eye-watering debt”.

“The steps already taken to curb the ballooning bill for agency staff need to be accelerated”, he said.