More trusts put into financial special measures

East Sussex Healthcare Trust, Gloucestershire Hospitals Foundation Trust, and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust have been placed in the regime by NHS Improvement today.

Financial special measures was introduced in July when five providers were placed in the regime.

NHS Improvement said has recently completed an investigation into financial governance at Gloucestershire and found “very serious failings”. Last month it was revealed that the trust was heading for a large unexpected deficit.

After the first five months of the year, Brighton and Sussex reported a deficit of £18m, which was £6m worse than planned. Of the adverse variance, £2.4m was due to the loss of “sustainability and transformation” funding, which is only allocated to trusts that meet their financial targets.

Its latest board report said the year-end forecast deficit is ”being reviewed and will change following board approval”.

East Sussex had a deficit of £23m, which was £5.7m worse than planned.

Jim Mackey, chief executive of the regulator, said: “The three providers going into financial special measures are causing significant concern.

“They’ve agreed savings targets locally but are a long way from meeting them. We also need to be able to rely upon good financial governance in every provider, so the problems unearthed at Gloucestershire are a real concern.

“The financial performance of these three trusts has simply not been good enough and so we’re sending in some targeted support to identify what the problem is, and help them fix it.”

He said £100m of potential extra savings have been identified at the five trusts already in financial special measures.