Teesside’s NHS bosses have heard how they need to cut costs as they strive to “live within our means”, with one trust to go £23m into the red.
The South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs health services including James Cook University Hospital, is planned to end the financial year with a £23.1m deficit, says a report to an NHS group board meeting. The North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, meanwhile, is expected to break even.
Chief finance officer Chris Hand said additional income was offset by spending pressures, particularly on pay and “high-cost drugs and devices”. A financial report details overspends of £6.5m on drugs, £4.1m on medical and surgical equipment and £8m on medical pay for the South Tees trust, but clinical income ahead of plans by £12m.
At a board meeting of the new Universities Hospitals Tees group, covering the two trusts, chief executive Stacey Hunter said: “I think the focus for the NHS to start to be able to live within our means will continue to be a significant priority for us. We did have a good opportunity to start to think about what that might mean for us, and how we do that balance around making sure we’ve got high-quality accessible services, but we start to be able to reduce some of the costs with that.
“We’re working on the basis that, although we’ve not got the formal planning guidance out, we’ve got a really good idea of what the priorities are likely to say to us. We’re getting on and planning anyway.”
The trust is still paying for an expensive Private Financial Initiative (PFI) agreement put in place in the late 1990s to finance the building and maintenance of the James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough’s Marton Road, which opened in 2003. It ended previous years with comparable deficits.
The meeting also heard of efforts to reduce waiting times, particularly for referral to treatment (RTT), the time it takes for patients to receive non-urgent treatment after referral, with a standard set that 92% of people should not wait longer than 18 weeks. Giving a report from October 2024, group managing director Neil Atkinson said of North Tees: “RTT is an issue of concern.”
Comment by North Tees managing director
“We are not consistently achieving the national standard of 92%, and the trend when you look at it is increasing. There are more patients waiting than there were historically over the last 12 months.”
He said the North Tees trust was very focused on the issue: “Despite the fact it is increasing, we are in a positive position when compared both regionally and nationally.” He said South Tees was comparable to the national average here but had deteriorated: “There is a significant focus across the last two months and the focus is very much around treating those patients that have waited the longest and those that are most clinically urgent.”
“Breastfeeding rates at North Tees are below the regional average, and the diagnostic six-week wait is below the national standard, however staffing problems were part of the real challenge we had. Those now have been resolved and has increased some of the capacity.”
“As a result, performance is recovering and certainly there is quite a significant improvement across the last three months.” The figures show the number of patients waiting longer than a year for treatment had gone up since October 2023, but no 65-week waits were reported.”
He also referred to “inconsistent” sickness absence in North Tees, an increase in stillbirths in South Tees, cancelled operations not being rebooked within four weeks, and faster cancer diagnoses.
He reported higher numbers of infections, with more E. coli cases this year than the previous two years in South Tees. He said the standard to treat A&E patients within four hours was being “regularly achieved” in North Tees, but they were keeping a “watchful eye” on it.
Additional comments from meeting participants
Ms Hunter said they were committed to making ambulance responses as good as possible, particularly at times of peak pressure: “Sometimes we’ll be offloading ambulances and it has an inevitable knock-on effect on how long somebody spends in A&E.
“It does mean sometimes that people are waiting longer. It is part of what we’d expect to see.”
Non-executive director Ali Wilson said during the meeting: “Both of our organisations in the group have made considerable progress. Whilst we would acknowledge none of our waiting times yet are where we would want them to be in terms of those constitutional standards, I would want to stress we’re not an outlier.
“In some instances some of our pathways are performing slightly better than our peers. Those waiting times are really important to people for all the obvious reasons.”
Non-executive director Fay Scullion added: “Our cancer targets remain a concern so there’s lots of activity in terms of contacting patients, doing clinical assessments to ensure that we get patients in who need to be in. But we need to keep an eye and make sure we do as much as we can to keep the rates where they should be.”
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