16.04.13
Mid Staffordshire goes into administration
Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust has become the first foundation trust to be placed into administration, to “safeguard the future of health services”, Monitor has announced.
The trust has been found to be clinically and financially unsustainable, and would need a subsidy of £73m over five years to stay afloat. Dr Hugo Mascie-Taylor and Alan Bloom of Ernst & Young will take over the running of the trust and have 45 days to design a new way to provide services that are sustainable in the long term.
Mid Staffordshire was recently the focus of the Francis report, where it emerged that hundreds of patients were routinely neglected between 2005 and 2009.
South London Healthcare NHS Trust became the first NHS trust to be put under the control of special administrators last year.
Monitor chief executive David Bennett said: “It is important that people in Mid Staffordshire know that they can still access services as usual at Stafford and Cannock hospitals while the trust special administration process is on-going.
“We have taken this decision to make sure that patients in the Mid Staffordshire area have the services they need in the future.”
In its statement, the regulator said: “Monitor took the decision to make the appointment after experts in a contingency planning team concluded that the trust was neither clinically nor financially sustainable in its current form.
“The appointment has been made following consultation with the health secretary and an order authorising the appointment was laid before Parliament today.”
Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “A growing number of organisations, including Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, are finding themselves facing financial difficulties and tough decisions about the future sustainability of their services.
“In the best interests of patients, Monitor is right to take firm action to help the trust recover its financial footing and deliver better care. We need to consider all the options and identify their merits and flaws.
“We need to do more to support troubled trusts at the earliest possible stage to maintain high standards of care, rather than getting to the point where trusts find themselves facing administration. This requires better integration of services and a focus on people's care needs, rather than the location of buildings.
“There is no denying that changes to services can be controversial and they can be difficult to communicate, even when there is a good clinical case for doing so.
“Poor care costs money and, in the worst cases, lives. We know all too well about the tragic consequences for patients and their families at Mid Staffs when this was the case in the past.
“Allowing trusts to spiral in to financial difficulties is in no one's interest. To address these issues, we need radical changes to improve outcomes and manage resources on a sustainable basis. This means having a whole-system solution that involves the wider healthcare community, rather than looking at one organisation in isolation.
“Staff, patients and the public need to be fully involved in any decisions about the future of the trust, especially given the short time frames to develop a plan. Discussions need to focus on why changes are necessary and administrators need to be open and honest about what options are on the table.”
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