Health leaders warn of ‘unsustainable’ model of care delivery
The chief executive of York and Scarborough Hospitals has said the current model of delivering care is not sustainable amid financial concerns.
Long-term financial pressures at the York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will require a re-evaluation of the model of delivering care, according to its chief executive, Clare Smith.
The trust, which runs York, Scarborough, Malton and Bridlington hospitals, is undertaking an efficiency programme with a target of around £60m.
At a trust board meeting on Wednesday, May 27, Ms Smith welcomed progress in the waste reduction and productivity (WRAP) programme.
“We’ve taken a step forward; we now need to take a further step forward in terms of how we accelerate the delivery of some of this.
“And being really clear around the motivators for this, which is around making sure that moving forward we have a robust clinical strategy so that we’re able to make good, sensible decisions around how we spend our money, based on what adds the most value to our patients.”
She added: “But also, it supports our people to have a better experience at work, because continuing to deliver care as we currently deliver care is not sustainable.
“That model does need to change.”
Andrew Bertram, the trust’s finance director and deputy chief executive, said the organisation was currently facing a shortfall in its waste reduction and productivity programme.
“We’ve delivered £2.9m in the month of April, against the £4.8m requirement, so we’re £1.9m short of the first month’s impact.”
He told health bosses: “The background context to that is that we’ve delivered £17m of the £62m savings.
“We’ve physically taken £17m from agreed budgets with confirmed spend reductions that we’ll map out through the rest of the year, and I’m really pleased that almost £15m of that is recurrent.
“That is more than the recurrent total last year in total that we removed in month one this year.
"There are some positives here, there absolutely are, but we can’t shake off the fact that we are £1.9m behind where we need to be.”
The trust’s leadership will be participating in a national plan escalation meeting in London with Sir Jim Mackey, Penny Dash, and NHS England’s Regional Director and Regional Chair, along with other NHS England colleagues to discuss its financial situation.
Ms Smith said: “At the meeting, we will be required to present and discuss the action we are taking and the decisions we will need to make to ensure delivery of our financial plan and to achieve plan compliance.
“This level of challenge and scrutiny makes it all the more important for us to focus our attention on delivery of our waste reduction and productivity programme, and we are already nearly two months into this year’s plan.”