£1.5m overspends are ‘improvement’
Health chiefs insist board is doing better
reducing expenditure, with the monthly overspend reducing by over 20 per cent from £1.9m per month between April and June to an average of £1.5m from July 2018 to January 2019.
“Contributory factors include: a reduction in the use of agency nursing staff; efficiency and productivity improvements in both elective and unscheduled care; the achievement of planned savings in primary and secondary care medicines and successful delivery of savings programmes in procurement, corporate services, estates and facilities. These imperatives were sought in the recommendations of our original 2017 Staging Report.
“At the time of writing, NHS Tayside is forecasting efficiency savings of £32.2m in 2018-2019, representing an overachievement of £2.8m against their original target of £29.4m. NHS Tayside has also been able to reduce reliance on non-recurring savings measures and the level of recurring savings has increased from 36 per cent in 2017-2018 to 44 per cent in 20182019.”
Health secretary Jeanne Freeman commented: “I welcome this latest report from the AAG which demonstrates the progress that NHS Tayside continues to make in key areas. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Sir Lewis and his team for their ongoing work. Jeanne Freeman, SNP health secretary
“I would also like to thank John Brown and Malcolm Wright who have stabilised finances, improved governance and changed the way services are planned and managed by putting clinicians at the heart of decision-making.
“On the basis of these encouraging results, it is the right time to bring NHS Tayside into line with other boards in a similar
position and re-designate it as Stage 4 in the Board Escalation Framework.
“However, this is just the start of the journey for the new chief executive, Grant Archibald, in making services the best they can be for patients of NHS Tayside. We will continue to work closely with the board in achieveing its aims over the coming months and years.”