instead plans to finish the year with a deficit of \u00a319.9m<\/a> against its funded budget. That is despite the board having exceeded its \u00a340m savings target for this year by \u00a32m.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n\n Latest figures show at the end of September the board had a deficit of \u00a311.387m and that has been blamed on increased drug prices, meeting the costs of people with continuing health care needs, delays in discharging patients from hospital despite improvements and pay costs such as overtime and for agency workers in mental health wards.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Board finance chief Robert Holcombe said work to find savings has continued and an additional \u00a34m has been identified but told board members savings are being used: \u201cWe\u2019ve had to utilise that where we\u2019ve not had budget available.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Savings and some use of reserves are also being drawn on to help the board cope with additional demand on hospitals over the winter.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Officials have anticipated having to explain how they intend tackling the \u00a319m deficit, but it is unclear when health secretary Jeremy Miles formally requested their plan.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Holcombe told its Wednesday, November 26, meeting at St Cadoc\u2019s Hospital in Caerleon: \u201cWe have been requested from Welsh Government to identify, implement and confirm the savings plan to achieve break even by the day after tomorrow. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt is something we were obviously aware would be required but I do think Friday was a bit unexpected.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Health board chair Ann Lloyd said it needed to stress it is trying to manage cost pressures but said: \u201cWe can\u2019t endanger patient safety and we have to maintain access to care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Board members have also agreed its chief executive Nicola Prygodzicz can request additional cash support from the government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-284805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}