The health services regulator Monitor has launched an investigation into the finances of Great Western Hospitals Foundation Trust. GWH is expecting to end the year with a £2.9 million deficit.
GWH has been coping with a 15 per cent increase in emergency treatments – which equates to about 300 unplanned admissions each month.
Part of their overspend is due to the need to employ agency staff to make sure they have the right staff for this increase in patient admissions.
The trust has put plans in place to improve its finances, but Monitor intends to find out whether more should be done to tackle the problem in the long term.
Laura Mills, Deputy Regional Director at Monitor, said: “Great Western is facing a difficult financial situation, and we need to find out why.”
“We are investigating to find out how we can help the trust to fix these problems, and whether we need to take further action on behalf of patients.”
Part of GWH’s annual expenditure goes on Private Finance Initiative (PFI) payments. These include not just the costs of building GWH, but also on-going costs such as cleaning and food contracts. GWH are challenging the value-for-money they are receiving under this PFI contract.
In addition, GWH now has to pay the annual PFI charges for Savernake Hospital which came into its ownership with the coalition government’s reorganisation of the NHS.