Telford NHS trust is in 'good financial position'
The new NHS boss in charge of finances at the group that pays for Telford’s health services said they are in a 'good financial' position but there are 'significant challenges' ahead.
Telford Clinical Commissioning Group's new finance director Jon Cooke said the group fully delivered the business rules they had to adhere to last year.
This included making a one per cent cumulative surplus of £2.4 million, holding contingency reserves for emergencies and keeping back another £2.279 million that is used to help other trusts out in deficit.
He said: "We are showing a £5 million surplus in the plan for this financial year - but that is money we can't spend and is effectively lost to the NHS.
"We have a total allocation of about £243 million for this year - of that total only £3.761 million is spent on wages and running costs. That is less than two per cent of what we receive.
"We are in a good situation. We have been well managed in the past and have had very strong leadership. This has put us in a really strong position this year.”
All CCGs are also required by the Department of Health to develop Quality, Innovation Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) programmes, to drive forward improvements in NHS care, at the same time as making major efficiency savings.
Mr Cooke said he anticipates “full delivery” of its QIPP savings target of £7.3 million for 2016/17.
Last year the group delivered savings of £5.3 million - which was just under their planned figure of £5.8 million.
He said: "We did predominantly deliver last year and this year we have a target of £7.3 million.
"We have already identified £5.4 million worth of savings and still need to find £1.8 million in year to meet our target.
"I have no worries that we will do that. I will expect we will deliver our target. We have identified lots of schemes where we can avoid admissions making it better for the patients and saves money.
"Telford CCG is a healthy CCG which is putting together some good initiatives but that is not to say we can't do more.
"It is a really strong CCG and one of the very few that are in a strong financial position. There are significant challenges but working with all the other health trusts we have got a good base line to build on."
