NHS Fife: Rising costs hindering efforts to tackle overspend

Finance chief Margo McGurk outlined a stark picture when updating health board members at their meeting on Tuesday.

She said a range of issues – including rising costs – meant that they were already over their end-of-year overspend target.

"The financial position is challenging," she said. "At the end of August, there was £14.7 million of an overspend and that is against a target year overall of £10.4m so it is really challenging. A lot of work is ongoing to mitigate that.

"The main reasons why the overspend is so far in excess of what we would expect is the continuing increasing level of demand and the requirement to access unscheduled care in particular.

"We have got significant costs associated with supplementary staffing. We have also got, while we have been successful in some areas, a number of cost improvement programmes that remain fairly challenging.

"We are trying to manage it against the ongoing impact of rising inflation and cost of living on our core cost pressure. We are not protected from any of that."

In a report to board members, Ms McGurk said the scale of the financial challenge was "unprecedented".

She continued: "As such, it is paramount that the board’s cost improvement target of £11.7m is delivered during 2022/23. Cost improvements of £2.628m have been delivered in the five months to August and work continues to further progress the financial improvement and sustainability programme.

"Other opportunities continue to be pursued to support any potential slippage in plans to ensure delivery of the board’s planned financial position for 2022/23."

Ms McGurk told board members that a "detailed review" into spending had been carried out to look at ways of addressing the overspend.

She added: "We are working on a set of actions to deliver as close to our agreed financial plan position as possible by March 31 and work is ongoing with colleagues at NHS Fife and across the partnership to work our way through that."