NHS Bassetlaw has identified £5.7m of “disinvestment opportunities” but says these will require £3.7m of one-off costs, including money for a GP incentive scheme.

The primary care trust’s 2011-12 plan says the organisation needs to identify and deliver £5.7m of efficiency savings.

It says that disinvestment opportunities worth £700,000 have been identified related to efforts to reduce non-elective admissions.

In addition, a detailed benchmarking exercise has identified a range of areas where significant opportunity is available to reduce costs to top quartile performance.

The main areas of opportunity come from:

  • High levels of outpatient appointments, where the PCT is in the top quartile for highest referral rates, is well above average for the percentage of outpatientsdischarged at first appointment and has a higher than average follow-up rate
  • Prescribing, where the organisation is in the top quartile for prescribing rates nationally and has significant variation between practices
  • Elective admissions, where the PCT is currently performing in excess of national average, is in the lowest quartile relating to the day case to inpatient ratio, has lower surgical threshold rates than Doncaster PCT who share the same main acute provider and carry out some interventions of limited clinical benefit
  • Mental health where the PCT has a high admission rate, and is in the top quartile nationally and within peer group for first attendance outpatient appointments

Disinvestment on such a scale is unlikely to happen without incurring one-off costs in both the planning and delivery stages, the papers say. To enable the delivery of the efficiency programme, the PCT has set aside a non-recurrent budget of £3.7m.

This includes:

  • An incentive scheme for GP practices to support delivery of the outpatient and prescribing elements of the plan.
  • In-practice support to enable a comprehensive review of ‘repeat prescribing’
  • Scheme in A&E at Bassetlaw Hospital for mental health patients
  • To support the clinical services review across Bassetlaw and Doncaster
  • Equipment for projects to support reductions in admissions and outpatient attendances (e.g telehealth).
  • To support the delivery of the management cost target

Source

NHS Bassetlaw, 2011-12 financial plan

Source date

30th March 2011

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