Savings plans! Contentious stuff! What do we cut, sorry, do more efficiently?
Each year HSJ asks each of the 140 general hospital trusts in England about the size and shape of their savings programme.
What, then, are we to make of our interactions with one trust that will remain nameless (not really, it’s South Tyneside Foundation Trust)?
Six months after the request was made, the mystery organisation (South Tyneside Foundation Trust) has still not deigned to reply.
End Game asks itself whether the initial question has gone astray. And maybe the same thing can be said about the 21 gentle reminders also.
Maybe the request was ill-timed in May and plans hadn’t been signed off (although many trusts responded the same day).
We tried and tried again, but as spring turned to summer, summer to autumn, autumn to winter, no answer emerged.
Does South Tyneside actually have a savings plan for 2013-14? The one we are over halfway through?
Does it have a savings plan so profound, so controversial that giving even the high-level outline would cause humongous ructions?
What are to think of South Tyneside Foundation Trust?
There it sits, silent, impassive and seemingly the possessor of a great and terrible secret. Like an Easter Island statue.
If only the X-Files team were still taking cases.
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