Health board overspends by nearly £7m

Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) posted a £7 million overspend position for last financial year.

And despite surplus positions being recorded for the previous two years, the health board ended up in a £6.8 million overspend position for the three year period.

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The financial struggles were discussed at the health board’s annual meeting last Wednesday, September 27.

Director of finance, Pete Hopgood said: “We ended with a year-end overspend of just over £7million.

“Our statutory duty is to deliver a break even position over a three year period.

“We delivered a surplus in 2020/2021 of £143,000 and a surplus of £80,000 in 2021/2022.

“That gives us an aggregated overspend over the three years of £6.8 million.

“That is the first time that the health board has not delivered a break-even (position) since 2015.”

Mr Hopgood said that this is a “significant issue” for the health board, and they will continue to have to deal with the deficit this year.

Mr Hopgood said:  “What I want to highlight is that we’ve had a total spend of £1.4 billion which has been used to provide care and good health outcomes for the population of Powys over that three year period.

“It’s very important that we maintain our discipline and deliver our plans that we have identified in terms of financial performance and even though we overspent in 2022/2023 we held to the forecast position during the year and that was as a result of our actions to maintain and minimise our spend as far as possible to stop our overspend increasing any further.”

Interim chief executive Hayley Thomas said that there had been “unprecedented demand” causing financial pressure on health services all over the country.

PTHB chairman, Carl Cooper believed that greater cooperation between public bodies and volunteer groups could be part of the answer to financial woes affecting public services.

Mr Cooper said: “It’s about looking at our resource across the system and we use that together as effectively and efficiently as possible.”

Members of the public are also allowed to ask questions at the annual board meeting.

One of those chosen and read out is: why has the health board reintroduced the wearing face masks in Powys hospitals?

Executive director of nursing and midwifery Clare Roche said: “The reasons that we’ve reintroduced masks is that we have seen rising rates of Covid-19 circulating in our communities in recent weeks.

“We watch really closely and are informed by the data from Public Health Wales which is showing a steep rise in our communities.

“Further significant increases are predicted for the next three to four weeks and we will continuously monitor that situation.

“The World Health Organisation (WHO) strongly advise the use of face masks for public health workers patients and visitors when Covid-19 is circulating in the community and therefore we are following that guidance.”