17.01.13
Mid-Staffordshire NHS FT risks special administration
Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust is “financially and clinically unsustainable”, Monitor has reported. The trust is at serious risk of insolvency and could be put into Special Administration.
Monitor’s interim report found that the trust needs to save £53m over the next five years, and that without continuing financial support, would not be able to pay its debts. Last year, the DH gave the trust £20m.
Mid-Staffordshire is one of the smallest trusts in the country, making it more difficult to provide adequate professional experience for consultants.
The Contingency Planning Team was sent in last September to improve clinical care and financial management. The team is now considering how services can be delivered sustainably, including the potential to move some services to existing or new providers. Once Monitor has received recommendations in the final report, it will decide whether to put the trust into Special Administration.
Between 400 and 1,200 patients are believed to have died between 2005 and 2008 after receiving poor care at Stafford hospital, which the trust runs. The Francis inquiry into how the NHS regulatory system failed to identify and prevent this scandal is due before the end of the month.
Professor Hugo Mascie-Taylor, clinical adviser to the Contingency Planning Team, said:
“In the past the trust struggled to maintain high quality clinical services at the same time as reaching its financial targets and even now it is struggling to achieve recommended levels of staffing. If the Department removed its financial subsidy it is clear that clinical services would suffer.”
Stephen Hay, managing director for Provider Regulation at Monitor, said: “The team of independent experts have consulted widely in examining whether Mid Staffordshire is sustainable in its current form. Now we have the team’s conclusions, it is important that they move forward quickly to find a way to safeguard services for patients in this area.”
Lyn Hill-Tout, chief executive at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, agreed: “Mid Staffs is not financially sustainable in its current form because, despite all the efforts not only of the trust but of the local health service, we do not have a plan which brings us to financial break even by 2015. Similar financial challenges are being faced across the country by smaller general hospitals.
“Like many smaller district general hospitals our services are not clinically sustainable in their current form. This is because medicine has and will continue to become more specialised and smaller hospitals cannot attract or resource the specialist teams and infrastructure required to maintain such services
“Although specialist services cannot be provided in every hospital, communities need to be able to access specialist care. One solution is to network (that is share) services with larger, specialist hospitals, which is something Mid Staffs has already begun to do successfully.”
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