12.09.13
Recovery plan published to keep Peterborough trust open
Peterborough City Hospital and Stamford and Rutland Hospital are to stay open and continue to provide all major services, Monitor has announced.
The plans for Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS FT have been agreed following significant financial difficulties. The DH currently supports the trust with £40m each year, and the trust is not getting paid for all the work it does.
Nevertheless, Monitor has found the trust clinically and operationally sustainable, and investigators have developed a five-year recovery plan. This includes a comprehensive programme of cost efficiencies to cut £10m off the trusts’ annual deficit; inviting bids from other providers to make better use of under-utilised space; facilitate joined-up working across the local health economy through a regional steering group; and seeking financial support from the government to fund the residual deficit.
Monitor has the confidence the trust can deliver this plan, it stated.
Dr David Bennett, chair and CEO of Monitor, said: “The problems at Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are severe – it is only able to provide services to patients due to emergency funding from the Department of Health.
“The plans proposed by the team of experts we sent in, which the trust has committed to implement, represent the best possible answer to an otherwise intractable financial problem.
“It secures services for patients in the long run, and also offers the opportunity for new treatments and services to be developed in the future.”
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