Director drafted in to £120m deficit trust as part of NHSE rescue deal

Tim Glenn, who is finance director and deputy chief executive at the Royal Papworth Hospital Foundation Trust, the leading cardiothoracic centre, is being seconded to East Kent Hospital University FT as interim chief finance officer for a year.

East Kent is currently reforecasting its deficit for the year, which was planned to be £72m, but is running at £10m a month.

The trust had previously warned it may run out of cash this autumn but its board meeting last week heard it had secured extra funding to help with cash flow.

Acting chair Stewart Baird told the meeting that Mr Glenn’s appointment had been backed by NHS England, which had also provided “a package to bring extra resources in to support our efforts”.

The trust later confirmed Mr Glenn would carry out a review to “provide validation” of its forecast position and compare its financial controls to other trusts.

East Kent FT is struggling to deliver its £40m cost improvement programme, with this month’s finance report saying it “has achieved very little efficiency savings so far, with £1.4m achievement against the £16.5m year to date plan”.

Chief executive Tracey Fletcher told the board last week that this CIP, most of which was meant to be delivered in the final months of the financial year, was not now expected to be reached.

And a report to Kent and Medway’s integrated care board meeting this month said CIP performance “falls a long way short of plan yet [the] full year plan remains as budgeted. This challenges credibility”.

The report – from the ICB’s productivity and investment committee – added that the ICB and NHSE were working with the trust to reforecast and ensure “any liquidity risk is appropriately mitigated” but that it “could not be assured that EKHUFT would meet their control total for 2023-24”.

The trust already has a financial turnaround director in place, and additional financial controls. It is working to reduce temporary staff costs and review workforce growth since 2019-20. It is expected to produce a reforecast deficit by Christmas.

At the end of month six (September), the trust had a deficit of £59.3m, £18.4m more than planned. Ms Fletcher wrote to staff recently to warn it would reach £120m by year end unless something changed.

The trust accounts for all its integrated care system’s planned deficit, with the other Kent and Medway trusts having planned to broadly break even. However, some of those are also now struggling and the ICS as a whole had a £75.1m deficit at mid-year, £39.8m down on its plan.

Michelle Stevens has been interim FD at the trust since April, when Philip Cave left to join Hertfordshire Partnership FT.