NHS providers had Â£960m deficit and 92,000 staff vacancies at end of year

NHS trusts in England ended the last financial year with a combined deficit of Â£960m - more than Â£460m worse than planned - according to a report which reveals the state of hospital finances.

By The Newsroom Thursday, 31st May 2018, 7:00 am

The report by the regulator NHS Improvement shows that some hospitals were able to improve their financial position while others sank into the red.

The deficit figure was released along with A&E performance figures which show 88.4 per cent of patients were seen in four hours at English hospitals, against a target of 95 per cent. The report also reveals that high demand on A&E caused an increase in the number of patients having to wait more than a year for planned treatment. Some 2,647 were waiting 12 months or more in March, compared to 1,513 a year earlier.

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The overal deficit has improved since the end of 2015-16, when it stood at £2.45bn, NHS Improvement said.

NHS trusts in deficit included York Teaching Hospital, which missed out on payments from the national Sustainability and Transformation Fund (STF), which is dependent on meeting performance targets.

The York trust ended 2017-18 with a £24m deficit, around £27m worse than planned.

A trust spokesperson said: “Last year was the most financially challenging in our history. As a result of missing our control total, we did not qualify for receipt of the trust’s share of the Sustainability Funding.

“One of the key pressures on our finances was staffing spend, and costs associated with filling vacant posts through agency and locum staff. Agency use remained high, and a number of decisions were made to strengthen staffing numbers in key areas in order to improve the safety of these services.” The report has been published after the Yorkshire Post revealed that hospitals were missing out on millions of pounds in performance-linked payments which included STF cash.

Among NHS organisation which benefited from the STF money was Leeds Teaching Hospitals, which ended the financial year with an £18.9m surplus.

Neighbouring Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust had a £20m deficit, around £17m worse than planned. Paula Sherriff, Labour’s Dewsbury MP and shadow health minister, said: “Despite the best efforts of our hard working NHS staff, this report is just the latest evidence to show that even as demand on services soars, our local hospital trusts are being systematically starved of the funding needed to deliver care.” The report also shows that at the end of the year, the NHS provider sector had 92,694 staff vacancies – an eight per cent vacancy rate. It included 35,794 nursing vacancies and 9,982 doctor vacancies. Providers filled most of the vacancies with temporary workers - but that led to £976m more being spent on NHS bank staff than planned.

Rising demand on hospitals saw more than 5.87m people go to A&E between January-March - more than 220,000 more than the same period last year.

Ian Dalton, Chief Executive of NHS Improvement, said: “Hundreds of thousands more patients have been to A&Es this year but the NHS did not buckle under the pressure.