\n University Hospital Southampton\u2019s financial plight is despite delivering \u00a390million worth of savings, which included hundreds of jobs cuts.\n<\/p>\n
\n The figures for 2025\/26, which pre-date the major fire at Southampton General Hospital, attracted the attention of the city council\u2019s health overview and scrutiny panel.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Warwick Payne, who chairs the panel, asked how the overspend had occurred and what steps were being taken to bring the trust budget back in line.\n<\/p>\n
\n Speaking at the meeting on Thursday, February 12, Duncan Linning-Karp, University Hospital Southampton deputy chief operating officer, said: \u201cThis year we are on course to deliver \u00a390million worth of cost improvement savings to try and help us return to a balanced budget going forward.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe savings programme is made up of a myriad of different things, including savings on drugs, devices, prices, different models of care.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n He added: \u201cIt is true to state we will also end the year with an overspend of \u00a345million.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe are developing, with the ICB (integrated care board) in the region, plans to try and return to break even over the next period.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt is absolutely challenging and it is important to acknowledge that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr John Noon asked if the hospital would be able to balance the books without reducing the services it provides.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Linning-Karp said it could not be done without changing services but added that was not the same as reducing services.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: \u201cThe truth is in healthcare it is very hard to stop doing things.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt is far preferable to change the way we do things to hopefully improve quality and also save money.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The senior health official gave the example of patients with no criteria to reside.\n<\/p>\n
\n As reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, in mid-January the trust had almost 300 patients in acute beds with no reason to be on wards.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Linning-Karp said reducing this number was the right thing for the patients, the system and the taxpayer.\n<\/p>\n
\n Cllr Payne said the scale of the overspend begged the question how the trust got into the position it finds itself in.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said trusts in other parts of the country were not experiencing the same financial challenge.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Linning-Karp said: \u201cI think that\u2019s a really difficult question to answer partially because I\u2019m not cited on other trusts and what position they are in.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI think as we came out of Covid we absolutely had a financial challenge and we\u2019re working very hard on savings.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe delivered \u00a390million of cost improvement this year to continue to address the deficit but we haven\u2019t managed to do that entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University Hospital Southampton\u2019s financial plight is despite delivering \u00a390million worth of savings, which included hundreds of jobs cuts.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-430202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430202","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=430202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}