Health board urges staff savings after boss payout

AHEALTH board which gave its outgoing chief executive a sixfigure payout is now urging its staff to find ways of saving £1 a day each to try to help balance the books.

Doctors, nurses and admin workers in Swansea Bay are being urged to switch off their computers when not in use, trim travel costs and print in black and white.

Swansea Bay’s Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University (ABMU) Health Board overspent by £39m last financial year and, according to its interim chief executive Alexandra Howells, is heading for a £43m deficit in 2017-18.

Earlier this year the health board paid £163,213 to departing chief executive Paul Roberts, who left his post “by mutual agreement” after less than six years in the role.

Now Ms Howells has thrown down the gauntlet to ABMU’s 16,000 staff to come up with ideas to turn the difficult financial situation around, but warned in a blog that “it is going to take a few years” to get into the black.

In her August blog Ms Howells wrote: “Your help is so important... if everyone saved £1 a day, that could add up to as much as £80,000 a week.”

The priority, she said, was not to overspend by any more than £36 million this financial year, while at the same time making £25m savings.

Although such sums are a fraction of ABMU’s £1.3bn annual budget, the health board was one of three placed by the Welsh Government into “targeted intervention” — one level below the most serious “special measures” — last September because it could not deliver adequate three-year business plans.

ABMU, which runs the Morriston, Singleton, Neath Port Talbot and Princess of Wales hospitals, treats an ageing population and has significant demands on its care services. The health board spends: £16,410 a day on gas and electricity at its four hospitals £6,100 a day on meals for patients £2,900 a day on clinical waste collection

£1,500 a day on domestic waste collection £3.5m a year on travel costs £1.7m a year on postage and carriage £1m a year on printing costs Staff are being urged to use Skype or other types of internet conferencing for business meetings to cut travel costs, to print only in black and white, and to switch off computers at night.

Ms Howells said most of the 150 computers at Morriston Hospital’s outpatients department used to be left on at night and at weekends but that this had now stopped, saving £3,000 a year. “Every single member of staff can make a difference,” she said. She has also targeted a £5m trim in the annual £143m expenditure on things like clinical equipment and supplies, pointing out that different prices were being paid for the same items.

An internal panel has been set up to identify equipment savings, building on successes by the health board’s procurement team and its clinicians. For example, cardiac department staff have saved nearly £900,000 in two years by getting the best deals from suppliers at twice-yearly meetings.

In a separate agenda item going before ABMU’s health board on Thursday, bosses have been told that locum doctor pay limits must implemented, more nurses and doctors recruited to cut expensive agency costs, and patients’ hospital stays reduced.

In 2016-17, the health board spent £9,765,207 on locum doctors.

Staff sickness is also an issue, with on average 880 staff off each day.