A major local NHS trust is facing “significant financial pressures” with an £80m budget black hole, according to its strategic director.
Liverpool University Hospital NHS Foundation trust, which manages the Royal Liverpool, Aintree, and Broadgreen Hospitals as well the Liverpool Dental Hospital will have to find around £30m in efficiency savings in order to balance its books.
Director of strategy at Liverpool University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Dr Clare Morgan told members of a Sefton Council overview and scrutiny committee last night (Tuesday) that the financial situation was “challenging” but was also largely a “one off.”
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With the opening of the Royal Liverpool Hospital and “capital implications” from that making up the bulk of the deficit, pressures have also been brought to bear following a major recruitment drive.
This was put in place after a CQC inspection which found a catalogue of “serious failings” in the Trust’s urgent and emergency care provision.
Providing an update to the committee, Dr Morgan said: “Progress has been made but there is still a lot to do.”
As a result of the inspection, carried out last year, the Trust was placed into a special category, SOF4, which means it receives support from a specialist national NHS team to improve its provision.
According to Dr Morgan, focus has been placed on changing the culture around leadership and management at the trust after the report found staff felt “let down”.
Dr Morgan said there are “green shoots of change” within the organisation which is starting to have a positive impact.
She added: “It was clear staff didn’t feel they had a voice and there was a very top down leadership and that cascaded through the organisation. One of the big drivers was staffing levels.”
Dr Morgan said that following a safe staffing review there was a mass recruitment drive. She said: “With more colleagues staff are less pressurised.
“We’vce also focused on senior management and the values and beliefs. We’ve looked a lot at organisational development so it’s about values cascading.”
Dr Morgan said there has also been a focus on staff retention with a “don’t leave programme”. She added: “It’s a programme to try and resolve some of the issues why people are leaving and it’s also about appraisals, to give people a sense of progression within the organisation, that they don’t have to leave to progress.”
While Dr Morgan said the recruitment drive has helped have an impact on driving up quality of service, it has also created cost implications for the Trust, which will need to be resolved through savings as it seeks to balance its books within 12 months.
Following a question from Cllr John Kelly as to where the savings could come from and whether frontline provision could be affected, Dr Morgan said: “The deficit will be a one off. There have been cost implications as we’ve been merging as an organisation.
“There are efficiencies we’ve still not tapped into from that, it’s not about cutting services.”
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