Published at 15:49, Wednesday, 08 December 2010

CUMBRIA’S health service is £9 million in debt following a dispute over funding.

NHS Cumbria, the county’s primary care trust, had been due to break even by the end of the 2010/11 financial year, or even have a small surplus. But following a funding row with the local hospital trust – over how much it is paid to treat patients at the Cumberland Infirmary and West Cumberland Hospital – it now faces extra losses of about £12 million.

Bosses are now looking at where additional savings can be made without hitting services. Details will be thrashed out in the coming weeks.

The dispute – centring around more than £20million of local NHS funding – left the two trusts unable to reach an agreement themselves. Instead a formal arbitration process was launched, meaning regional health bosses at NHS North West were asked to decide who owed what.

GPs in the county did not believe the PCT should have to pay North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust for procedures they deemed not to be best clinical practice. These include people being readmitted back into hospital within 14 days of an earlier stay; hospital procedures cancelled for non-clinical reasons; and also admissions to hospital for less than a day.

NHS North West concluded about a month ago that it should foot this bill, worth about £12million. However the hospitals trust did not escape, being told it must pick up the bill for the remaining £10million that formed part of the contract dispute.

At NHS Cumbria’s monthly board meeting last week, bosses heard that to date only about £3 million of savings have been found since the result of the arbitration process. This means the predicted deficit now stands at £9 million.

A turnaround director is now in post to help identify further savings.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk