Wiltshire CCG’s accountable officer and clinical chair have written a letter to local GPs (obtained and published online by Dr Phil Hammond) explaining that the body’s financial situation is “dire”: “We have notified NHS England that we will miss our financial target by £4.8m in 2015/16 and on current planning assumptions will have a funding gap of approximately £23m in 2016/17”.
As a result, NHS England has requested a Financial Recovery Plan focusing on improvement of the in-year financial position and recovery actions to ensure financial sustainability in 2016/17 and 2017/18. Failure to achieve the financial recovery would result in placing the CCG into “turnaround”, including external intervention into its local health system in order to recover the financial position.
In addition to capping the amount of planned care activity that Wiltshire CCG purchases from hospital providers and increasing the number of procedures that the CCG will no longer fund, the CCG is also considering establishing pre-referral clinics in order to ascertain whether patients really need acute care intervention.
To see the full letter, please click here