Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
NHS board’s crisis talks on finances
TAYSIDE health bosses have held crisis talks as the board prepares to explain to Scottish ministers why it knowingly misrecorded the state of its finances for several years.
NHS Tayside held an “extraordinary” behind-closed-doors meeting yesterday to discuss a report released by independent auditors Grant Thornton.
The report found health bosses had held back funding provided by NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) for developing digital healthcare to mask the true extent of its money problems.
It concluded the health board has been “misrepresenting” its financial position since 2012 — and that outgoing finance director Lindsay Bedford, and his counterpart at NSS, were aware of the practice.
Health bosses considered the report and their own response at the meeting — which the Tele was not allowed to attend — ahead of a Holyrood grilling this Thursday.
The cash-strapped health board is already £5.5 million over its budget, but the Grant Thornton report adds another £5.3m on to the savings the board must find before the end of 2017/18 — the total amount of “eHealth” funding it has squirrelled away.
Local health chiefs will spend Thursday morning explaining to Holyrood’s public audit and post-legislative scrutiny committee why the practice occurred. The report will then be discussed at an open NHS meeting later that day. NHS Tayside chief executive Lesley McLay has already admitted that the practice was “unacceptable and should not have happened”.
She has also written to Paul Gray, director-general of health in Scotland, to inform him that a new review of Tayside’s practices would be commissioned in a bid to rebuild the Scottish Government’s confidence in the board.
Colin Sinclair, chief executive of NSS, said: “I take this matter seriously and accept the need for improvements to governance processes.”
NHS Tayside’s financial moves have attracted ire from local politicians, including Dundee-based Labour MSP Jenny Marra, who chairs the committee that’s set to grill health bosses on Thursday. She said: “£5.3m is a huge sum of money to be ‘mis-accounted’.
“It is another glaring example of financial chaos and poor governance at NHS Tayside.”