NHS trusts are forecasting an end-of-year net deficit of around £2.3 billion finds the latest quarterly monitoring report from The King’s Fund. The estimate, based on survey responses from 83 trusts, comes as NHS national bodies are imposing stringent financial controls in an effort to reduce the deficit to £1.8 billion by the end of the financial year. This underlines the risk that the Department of Health will breach parliamentary protocol by overspending its budget.
The regular survey of NHS finance directors carried out for the report also highlights increasing concerns about quality of care as the financial crisis deepens. For the first time since the survey began in 2011, more than half of trust finance directors (53 per cent) said that quality of care in their local area has worsened in the past year. Nearly as many (48 per cent) clinical commissioning group finance leads agreed.
Full QMR report at The Kings Fund 18 February 2016