News / NHS struggling to meet 9% spending cuts
NHS SHETLAND is to receive £55,000 from a national pot of £14 million towards improving people’s experience of seeing their GP and mental health services, it was announced this week.
However the cash will do little to help the health board find the massive £3.9 million savings it needs next year, representing nine per cent of its £54 million budget.
The first staff consultation held on Wednesday on how to find those spending cuts raised fears the board plans to close hospital beds and cut services.
This week managers emphasised no such plans, including the closure of Ronas Ward, were in place.
Instead the board said it is sounding out staff and other stakeholders to find a safe and practical way to introduce major efficiencies.
“At no point did we say were closing any unit,” nursing director Kathleen Carolan stressed.
“If staff came away from that meeting thinking we were closing Ronas Ward, that was not the nature of the discussion we had.”
However Carolan did say that reducing hospital beds by providing more care in the community was a strategy the health board has been pursuing for the past eight years and would continue to do so.
Community health and social care director Simon Bokor Ingram added: “When you have to find savings of £3.9 million, everything will have to be looked at.
“We are not rushing this, it will be done in a planned way.
“We will be bringing forward several schemes (for saving money) over the next year and beyond.
“We don’t want to be in the position where we can’t deliver safe health care. All the proposals we have put together have safety at the heart of them.”
Bokor Ingram said that there was also no talk about reducing the number of doctors and nurses.
Instead the aim is to make Gilbert Bain Hospital a place where people go for “specialist care”, while other forms of health care are provided as much as possible in the community.
Other areas where money could be saved include using video conferencing to provide consultations in health centres and care homes, looking at the way travel to hospital in Aberdeen is organised and “efficient prescribing” of drugs.
The health board has a general target of reducing its spending by three per cent every year due to the tight public spending climate the rest of Scotland and the UK is facing.
In the past NHS Shetland has relied on non-recurrent savings, like selling off buildings, to meet its spending targets and as a result had “slipped behind”.
Bokor Ingram admitted the health board faced “an extremely challenging situation next year” and they were finding it “extremely difficult” to find the savings they needed to.
More consultations with staff and stakeholders will be taking place over the next two months, but he stressed that it would not be possible to find ways to meet the target by 1 April.
Meanwhile NHS Shetland chief executive Ralph Roberts welcomed the government grant announced on Thursday.
“Shetland’s share of this is likely to be £55,000. We have already started to work with out local services and staff so that we can create good bids and ensure the best possible use of this funding to support our primary care and mental health services.”
Earlier this month the health board was tasked with finding £1.8 million in savings from the joint community health and social care service it runs alongside Shetland Islands Council.
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