Financial challenges for Mid Staffs Trust.

The Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust responsible for the failings in care at Stafford Hospital have been told that without continuing financial support the trust would not be able to pay off its debt and risks going bankrupt.

The report by Monitor also stated the Trust was struggling clinically, despite a financial injection from the Department of Health of £20 million. Monitor went on to state that the trust would need to find savings amounting to 7% of its total budget and get a £73 million boost from the Department of Health just to break even.

Lyn Hill-Tout, Chief Executive of the Trust admitted the Trust was not financially or clinically sustainable, she went on to say “We do not have a plan which brings us to financial break even by 2015. This is because medicine has and will continue to become more specialised and smaller hospitals cannot attract or resource the specialist teams and infrastructure required to maintain such services.”

The public enquiry report into the clinical failures of Stafford Hospital is due to be published on 6th February 2013