Issue - meetings

To receive the NHS report updating the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on the 2009/10 budget and current financial performance.

The Committee received the report, introduced by James Slater (Director of Commissioning West Haringey, NHS Haringey) updating on the 2009/10 budget and current financial performance and identifying key areas of risk that the Primary Care Trust (PCT) faced in achieving a balanced position by the year end.  The Committee expressed concern that PCT reserves had been committed yet winter illnesses may put pressure on NHS Haringey.  Mr Slater stated that the reserves would be put towards ordinary hospital activity if necessary and emphasised that no patient would be turned away.

The Committee highlighted that local press reports highlighted high pregnancy rates and a lack in breast screening for women and asked if the budget was going to address these problems.  Mr Williams (Interim Joint Chief Operating Officer, NHS Haringey ad NHS Islington) stated that the NHS had invested adequate resources into breast screening; in a deprived and complex community such as Haringey it was difficult to set out an investment plan with new ways of providing services as well as putting in adjustments to make the system sustainable.

The Committee questioned how NHS Haringey would stop the existing over-spend and break-even.  Mr Slater stated that there were pressures due to costing arrangements and there was a technical process of invoicing, billing and charging for contracts that were commissioned for acute care which NHS Haringey was working on with the Strategic Health Authority for London in order to adjust these tariffs and work with providers and create more community based services.  The Committee were informed that other PCTs in London were facing the same over-spend problems.

The Committee requested a future update on the budget and more detail about how much money NHS Haringey had in savings accounts and how the money that NHS Haringey held as an initial contingency of £12m, had been applied through the year.

RESOLVED

That the updated 2009/10 budget, and the financial results for the first 5 months, and the risks facing the Primary Care Trust (PCT) for the remainder of the year be noted.