NHS providers should do more to improve financial performance, says Monitor

NHS Regulator Monitor has called upon NHS providers to take more action in improving their operational and financial performance.

The regulator has published an analysis of NHS providers’ operational and financial performance, showing NHS providers were under sustained pressure from an increase in demand for care, issues in discharging medically fit patients, and high costs.

The problems also meant that providers missed several national waiting time standards, including the A&E performance measure, in the final three months of 2015. A deficit of £2.26 billion was also reported at the end of the year, £622 million worse than planned.

Nonetheless, Monitor’s report also highlights that the sector made total savings of £741 million, between April and December 2015 and calculated that NHS providers treated 4.12 million emergency patients between October and December 2015.

The report outlined: 179 out of 240 NHS providers reported a deficit of which 132 were acute trusts; the provider sector spent £2.72 billion on agency and contract staff which is £1 billion more than planned; providers have estimated that delayed transfers of care have cost the sector £104 million so far this year albeit other estimates put the true cost at a much higher level; providers made £194 billion of savings which is £257 million less than planned; and that providers have identified £452m of further financial improvement opportunities for the rest of the 2015/16 financial year.

It also found that: the NHS provider sector as a whole missed the A&E waiting time target of seeing 95 per cent patients within four hours between October and December 2015; between October and December 2015, 98,000 people waited longer than four hours in A&E for admission due to poor bed availability elsewhere in their trust; and the size of the waiting list for routine operations reached 3.14m as providers failed the referral to treatment healthcare standard for the first time.