More money for NHS Ayrshire & Arran, but ….

NHS Ayrshire & Arran will receive a government funding increase of £15.5 million (2.8 per cent) for the coming financial year. This is on top of last year’s general allocation of £574.7 million.

But – nearly a quarter of this £15.5 million increase is to compensate for the loss of income to the Health Board as a result of abolishing prescription charges from April 2011.  A further £5.5 million from the increase goes to NHS Ayrshire & Arran’s share of a £70 million ‘Change Fund’. This, the NHS says unblushingly, is ‘to enable us to work with local councils on the redesign of health and social care services – specifically to allow speedy but safe discharge from hospital, and prevent avoidable admissions of elderly people to hospital.’ In other words, how to cut the number of patients, preferably without actually killing them. By the time this strangely expensive talking is paid for, only £6 million of the increase remains to meet the inflationary costs of pay and supplies. These costs include the increase in National Insurance, the price of new and existing medicines and inflation increases in commodities such as food, energy and textiles – a total of £25 million. So a hand-out of £15.5m shrivels to a deficit of £19m.

In welcoming the funding allocation Derek Lindsay, Executive Director of Finance, noted that the new funding available to pay for ‘these cost pressures’ is about one per cent of the Ayrshire and Arran NHS budget. He said, ‘We therefore need to make more than three per cent efficiency savings and cutting costs (£18 million) in 2011/12 in order to balance the books.’

Nothing much new there, then.