Shropshire Star comment: Bubbly for NHS has gone flat
In some much-trumpeted good news on funding for the NHS in Shropshire, the Government last month announced £312 million to pay for the changes to the county’s two main hospitals, which will be needed at the end of the Future Fit process.
Now comes some news to turn the bubbly flat.
In the day-to-day real-world running of the NHS in the county now, there is an unfolding financial disaster.
Roll in the deficit from previous years, and the CCG is in a pit of debt £59.5m deep.
In summary, things are bad and getting worse. There have been “a number of unforeseen pressures” which arose since the beginning of the financial year, since April 2017, and these were not included in the financial plan.
Factors have included “challenges within the Shropdoc out-of-hours provider” and rises in the prices of common, and usually inexpensive, drugs.
Accountancy firm PwC was invited to conduct what is described as a financial “deep dive” last month to review the CCG’s finances. The dive allusion is appropriate, because the CCG seems itself to be in what might in a private organisation be compared to a death dive. When you are diving, it takes massive and unusual forces to turn you back, if it is indeed possible.
That is the position the CCG now finds itself in – one of trying to find ways of reversing the dive.
Massive debt
“Unforeseen pressures” or not, its underlying inability to forecast accurately has complicated the task of finding a sound path through the mess.
In fairness, the CCG is not alone in having problems when it comes to discerning the images in the financial crystal ball.
It is living with massive debt – debt on such a scale that the question has to be asked whether it is possible ever to climb out of it through the use of reasonable financial counter-measures.
Reasonable might be defined in the health context as being not in the nature of enormous and far reaching cuts.
Turning things around is going to be a long haul.
There is a solution, and it involves a Fairy Godmother of the sort who found £312 million for Shropshire hospitals the other week.
As Shropshire grapples with its financial headaches, the health chiefs must dream that that magic wand will wave again.
