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UCLH struggles to balance books

One of England’s highest profile teaching trusts applying for foundation status this July has balanced its books with ‘one-off receipts’ in the last few years and ‘this is not a viable position for an independent body going forward’, according to its chair.

In a hard-hitting report to the May meeting of the trust board, chair of University College London Hospitals trust Peter Dixon said financial control, business planning and ‘our whole approach to risk management’ had to improve.

‘There is all the difference in the world between operating in an environment where we have a safety net at the present time and being on our own in a very different operating environment in the future,’ he added.

He also aired concerns about what he understood was a ‘last minute’ decision by the Department of Health to limit foundation trusts to cover of £1m each for property insurance and disruption or discontinuity of services from accidents or fires. Beyond that they have been told to look for commercial cover, he said.

If services in the trust were interrupted in one of its major locations for a considerable period ‘we could be talking about a loss of tens of millions of pounds and commercial insurance to cover this would be prohibitively expensive’, he added.

A DH spokesman told healthmatters that on property the £1m limit would apply, but said that in practice it has treated claims above that limit on a case by case basis.

The near-disappearance of waiting lists for routine heart surgery under Patient Choice – with many patients said to have gone to the private sector instead – has left the trust’s Heart Hospital with a £5m deficit over the last financial year.

But the trust has denied it was wrong to buy the luxury hospital from the private sector in 2001 for £40m with the help of a grant of £27.5m from the Department of Health and a £9m subsidy from the London directorate of health and social care over two years.