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Hospitals in bid to find £8m savings
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Hospital bosses in Sheffield have brought in a management consultancy firm to help them find millions of pounds of savings.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has hired multinational consultancy giant Deloitte to help find £8 million of savings a year in the general surgery department.
But the decision to pay the firm £150,000 over the next month to help cut the budget by around 20 per cent has been criticised by the Unison union, who predict job losses will be a result.
The general surgery department, which employs 400 staff to carry out 7,000 operations a year at the Northern General and Royal Hallamshire hospitals, reports a deficit of roughly £2m each year.
However a new accounting rule called service line reporting, which changes the way the department’s budget is calculated, has put the annual deficit closer to £8m - around 20 per cent of the budget.
Paul Skinner, clinical director of the general surgery department, said in a letter to staff that managers had decided to bring in Deloitte to save £2m by next year, and £8m a year in the longer term.
He said: “A large proportion of our costs are not our own and with the number of medical outliers and the reduction in access to theatres, this is obviously one of the areas that we are all well aware needs further work to ensure financial balance.
“However, we do live in a difficult financial climate and this will only get harder.”
Charlie Carruth, Sheffield organiser for Unison, which represents 7,000 staff at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, said: “It doesn’t take a genius to calculate that if you are overspending by £2m or £8m a year, but providing a high-quality service, you are calculating your budget wrong.”
“For the hospital to say this will benefit staff and patients is clearly not true.
“It is clear that at the end of this there will be a recommendation on the table to cut staff - that is the main cost.
“Deloitte have been brought in to do a hatchet job.”
Kirsten Major, director of service development at the hospitals, said the trust had previously managed to cover the budget deficit, but a reduction in NHS funding meant they now had to take a different approach.
She said: “We have decided to support our own staff by investing £150,000 to give them access to a team of experts, including clinicians, who have specialist knowledge and experience in other UK and European hospitals of new systems, processes and best clinical practice.
“They will bring ideas of what we could adopt here in Sheffield to benefit patients and at the same time get maximum value for money.
“This is a continuation of work which we have been doing over the past two years to ensure we provide the right care, in the right place at the right time and in the most efficient way.
“Small improvements would by far exceed the £150,000 cost of the consultancy support as well as deliver real benefits to patients.”
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Comments
There are 9 comments to this article
Page 1 of 1
principle
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 08:50 PMMr. Skinner and his wise peers are spot on here. Surprisingly, you'll find it's a wee bit more complicated than one households income and expenditure. These actions are brought in to save £, so rather than jobs and lives lost, they might perhaps... be saved. Possibly, these managers might of fact put those they're responsible for before themselves and their pay packets, only total numbskulls would think otherwise.
Iwanttruth
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 07:19 PMI have a feeling that nurse's and doctor's as well as domestic staff are going to lose their jobs and there may be deaths as a result of this.
Tawny
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 07:17 PMWell, for a start I could have saved £150,000 over the next month - don't employ these consultants. There that was easy, now if the management of the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are so incompetent that they need to employ external consultants then get rid of them, surely we must be well on the way to saving the £8m.
George1916
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 06:40 PMI would suggest that they were told to employ Deloittes, a company very closely linked to other NHS organisations and very well paid. They will go in, tell the managers that the largest part of the budget goes in staff pay, there may even be accusations that staff are fiddling timesheets, the managers will then pass that on to the lower grades as a method of scaring and bullying them, vague threats, unsettle the staff, makes it ripe to start giving parts of the service to the private sector, I bet they have already been talking to Boots the chemist to take over pharmacy service.
Wombwell Fitter
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 05:53 PMi am spending too much money. My house hold budget needs sorting. What do I do? Sit down with the Mrs and sort it. Easy Peasy if you have half a brain.
Charlie Farleigh
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 05:02 PMYou'd think that those earning £100k per annum plus would have the capability to do these jobs! I am, very clearly, a total numbskull.
Archangel
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 04:43 PMWhy are we paying endless numbers of managers and executives if the need to bring in consultants? The cull obviously needs to start with those who brought in the consultants.
1graybags
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 04:39 PMstopping wasting money on consultants would be a good way to start saving money. But the inept managers in the public sector love these consultants who make decisions for them and can then be blamed if things go wrong.
ISeeEverything
Friday, February 24, 2012 at 03:50 PMIf managers were half as clever as they claim when negotiating their pay deals, they wouldn't need outside help, would they?
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