England’s NHS foundation trusts in deficit by £321m

According to the health regulator Monitor, more than 50% of all foundation trusts in England are now in the red.

Monitor’s quarterly report, which looked at 147 trusts in the last quarter of 2014, said that hiring expensive agency staff was having a significant impact on their budgets.

The report found that the deficit of £321m had risen from £254m in the previous three months, and it had been £167m in the quarter before that.

£419m more than planned was spent by trusts because of increased use of agency and contract workers.

Research showed that 2.7 million people attended foundation trust accident and emergency units in the last quarter of 2014, which is an increase of 8% on the same period in 2013. There was also an increase of 7% of non-emergency patients in the same quarter, with over 2.3 million patients being treated.

Monitor’s chief executive, Dr David Bennett, said that if the NHS was to cope with the growth in demand for services, it needed to “move rapidly towards more joined-up, efficient models of care.”

The Health Foundation think tank, responding to the report, made the point that the figures excluded the recent period of severe pressure due to winter conditions.

A spokesman from the Department of Health said that it anticipated that the NHS would end the year in financial balance as a whole.

“We know the NHS is busier than ever, which is why we’re increasing the budget by an extra £2bn next year to back the NHS’s long-term plan to move care from hospital to home,” he said.

“All NHS organisations know that financial discipline must be as important as safe care and good performance.

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), Medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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