Hospital set to report £23m deficit

A hospital trust is expected to end the financial year having overspent by more than £20m.

The South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STHNFT), which runs the James Cook University Hospital, is projected to report a deficit of £23.1m for 2024-25.

The trust's chief finance officer Chris Hand said the situation had been caused by spending pressures around pay and "high-cost drugs and devices".

Stacey Hunter, CEO of the University Hospitals Tees group, said getting the trust to live within its means would be a "significant priority" for management.

A financial report detailed how large overspends had been made on drugs (£6.5m), medical and surgical equipment (£4.1m) and medical pay (£8m).

The trust is also still paying for an expensive Private Financial Initiative (PFI) agreement put in place in the late 1990s, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The PFI agreement was signed to pay for the building and maintenance of the James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, which opened in 2003.

A board meeting of the Universities Hospitals Tees group, which oversees STHNFT and the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, heard how the trusts were working on reducing referral times.

Referral to treatment (RTT) guidelines state 92% of patients should not wait longer than18 weeks for non-urgent treatment.

But group managing director Neil Atkinson said RTT was an "issue of concern" for the North Tees trust.

"We are not consistently achieving the national standard of 92%, and the trend when you look at it is increasing," he said.

"There are more patients waiting than there was historically over the last 12 months."

He said South Tees was comparable to the national average but had deteriorated.

"There is a significant focus across the last two months and the focus is very much around treating those patients that have waited the longest and those that are most clinically urgent."

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