After what Isle of Wight hospital bosses called ‘a Summer which felt more like a winter’, the NHS Trust’s new chief, Penny Emerit, says some ‘difficult decisions’ will have to be taken to reduce spending.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust has experienced unexpected pressure on its services and has carried out fewer elective operations than expected, a meeting of health chiefs heard. In some cases, patients were treated in corridors.
This financial year, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust has a deficit of £17.6million and, compared to what was expected, it is £3.5million worse off.
Providing cover for strike action by medical staff (though the reasons for the walkouts were respected), inflation and increased demand for acute services are being blamed for the overspend, by the Trust’s executive leaders.
Ms Emerit had already announced ‘transformation programmes’ for urgent care, local care, hospital discharges and elective surgeries.
A newly-created financial recovery board will look at redesigning services and cutting the money spent on its workforce, such as in the case of agency staff.
Earlier this year, the Island’s acute services merged with Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, in what NHS England called the ‘logical next step’ to help tackle long-standing challenges, when it comes to delivering healthcare to Islanders.
So they are in the red and yet they form a new board to investigate why? Are they working for free then? Get rid of all those bloody managers who sit around hiding in offices and do f’ all, except drink coffee, talk about holidays and don’t do any work. Like to see how many managers there are at that hospital, too many that’s for sure.
So they are going to cut the cost of the workforce and agency staff which means the ward staff will be depleted as well as medical staff but the administrators will keep riding the gravy train.
One reason they cannot get staff is that the hospital has basically reduced to a glorified first aid unit with most major cases going to the mainland so staff do not want to relocate to the island as there is little or no chance of career advancement combined with the stress of being short handed and incompetent management.
Yup. Hope the tory voters liked their tax cuts as they wait 8 hours for an ambulance. The Tories goal, make the NHS so bad that we’ll ask them to privatise it. Been their goal for the last 50 years.
And if you think anything will improve under any other political party, you are totally deluded. They are all as bad as each other.
No it won’t Fred. If Starmer is the next PM, he has too many Tory policies, and saving the NHS is not a priority he intends to deal with. He has no intention of changing the problems the tories have created for ordinary people. He has already said that. A Labour government under Starmer will be no different to the tory one we have now. All it will be is different name same shit policies
18 years of the last 50 have been Labour or alliance. Blair, under Labour, was responsible for decimating the Nhs dentistry.
Don’t let any facts get in the way of a good rant….
This is complete and utter garbage. The highest investment in the NHS, as a proportion of GDP, was under the last Labour government.
In addition, I don’t recall not being able see a GP or dentist or record length waiting lists for treatment, or record waits for ambulances or A&E.
You Torybots need to quit the stupid whataboutery. We all know it’s fake and we all know that nobody could be worse than the incumbent self-serving spivs and shysters.
Garbage? –
Fact or fiction….
Then in 2006, Labour (under Blair) introduced a new dental contract, and the result – like the new contracts for GPs and hospital consultants – was a disaster.
Under the old system, dentists were paid for the work that they did.
Under the new one, they are paid a fixed fee of around £80,000 a year for achieving so many Units of Dental Activity.
This Stalinist approach has failed completely.
You seem to be forgetting that the last labour government bankrupted the country and they didn’t have a global pandemic to deal with. Grow up idiot.
Providing cover for strike action by medical staff was one reason, so they need to employ fresh staff who are happy with the wages and then around the country get rid of the old staff who do nothing but moan and strike.
Just a suggestion ~ why don’t they weigh in the Koan to the scrap man and raise a few pounds.?
They can’t do that as the Koan is a permanent reminder of wasted money to all on the Island:-)
I would like to bet that the cuts come to front line staff and not the hideous number of managers / admin
They will probably recruit more managers to administer the cuts !!
Too many acute cases, not surprising with the waiting list times. St Mary’s like the Council is top heavy in management roles, in days gone bye there was one manager per section if that. Now it is a manager managing a manager. Someone really needs to look into the staffing levels, their out puts and their pay in the “management” areas in both NHS and Council thousands would be saved every year.
So they build a new bit to the hospital and can’t afford staff to run it or just get further in debt to many managers maybe
That was always going to be the case, and is just another example of Seely’s spin and lies.
Well why not just have one boss instead of bosses?
Get one competent boss to do the job
It will save 100s off 10000s of pounds yearly.
High agency costs has been the scourge of the NHS for decades. Certainly the Tories have done little to solve this problem. But who can blame those choosing to work as agency and locums when the pay rate is so much higher than permanent job pay rates.
And being an Island, I imagine the agency rates for getting mainlanders over here to work are even higher than normal. Good luck solving that one.
Can we claim back some of OUR money that instead went to Portsmouth?
Exactly why did the money go to Portsmouth?? Oh thats right to run St Mary’s into the ground..and send people to Portsmouth and Southampton for treatment..let’s send people to the mainland make sure the fares are still high with the discount, they will get fed up with all the travelling and die
Tax the super-rich, pay our hero keyworkers properly
Best way to cut costs.
No.1 Scrap sick pay
No.2 Sack unnesseccary admin staff & unnesseccary Management
No.3 Ban Overtime
No.4 Ban Working From Home, get the lazy B’stards back into the
Workplace.
St.Mary’s Hospital millions in the red. And the cause, too many useless incompetent administrators, too many useless incompetent management and bosses all being paid ridiculous salaries and producing bugger all. It has been happening for years and no one has had the balls to question it for fear of bullying or being sacked or threats, and to top it all, the tory shits stealing the NI payments we have paid in for years to support the NHS and keeping it for themselves and payments to corrupt crony mates for useless contracts. So the headline should read in reality, St. Mary’s hospital millions in the red thanks to tory cuts, and bad administration and management
100% agree with that. This should be investigated, but it won’t be of course.
Totally agree, a close relation worked for the maintenance department a few years ago and the boss in charge of the whole department (on huge sums of money) sat in his office watching TV and had no idea how to use his own computer or any other IT equipment.
Simple – get rid of incompetent useless managers and spread the savings to the front line workers and equipment.
Not sure how they managed that, when they don’t do anything there any more. We are expected to catch several buses and a boat, to get the care we should have at St M’s. So, how can they overspend so much, if nearly all of the services have been moved to the North island?
Many islanders are now suffering, because they cannot afford the transport ( Which, no surprise, at the same time, they council also announced they have cut the fund that used to help with health related travel costs) or just aren’t well enough, are too infirm or simply scared of something they have never wanted to do, leave the island. It can be a major upheaval, for example, having to take the trip when you are a child with asthma.