Plan to save £5m through health care changes

Manx Care has a forecasted £16.8m overspend this year

Manx Care has announced a raft of staffing and service changes to save a further £5m by April in a bid to reduce a forecasted £16.8m overspend.

Savings will be made by cutting spending in areas including the use of bank and agency staff, temporarily closing the Mental Health Recovery College and reducing patient transfers to the UK.

It comes after the healthcare provider made public its plans to cut elective surgery lists to save about £220,000.

Manx Care said it expected an overspend of about £8m would still remain by the end of the financial year.

Manx Care was given an operating budget of £347m this financial year, and has achieved £10m in savings over the past two years.

Chief Executive Teresa Cope said none of the savings being made were "easy" decisions to come to, and had been made with a backdrop of Covid and the recommendations in Sir Jonathan Michael's report, which led to Manx Care's creation.

Ms Cope said while that was "incredibly challenging", she insisted that some measures, like optimising rostering of staff, could be achieved without any adverse effect on patients.

Teresa Cope said efforts had been made to minimise any impact on patients

As part of the savings, patient transfers will be reduced by bringing consultants over to the island from the UK to deliver shoulder clinics and the new brain cancer pathway.

A clinical care coordinator has been appointed to review every patient transfer request to evaluate if that appointment could be done on the island or virtually.

About 215 patients on waiting lists for elective surgeries in Liverpool will be "clinically validated" to see if these can be delayed into the new year.

Manx Care will also ask Wrightington Hospital in Liverpool to reduce the number of elective orthopaedic surgeries carried out on Manx patients this year.

Around £15,000 will be saved on agency staff by keeping the Minor Injuries Unit at Ramsey Cottage Hospital closed on weekends, although this is set to be reviewed at the end of the year.

Agency staff are extra staff employed via an external body, whereas bank staff are current or retired staff who work additional shifts when needed.

In addition to the temporary closure of the recovery college, other mental health services that will be reduced include early intervention initiatives and withdrawing out of hours social work.

In its plan, Manx Care also noted that there were "long-term" cost saving schemes in place such as those focused on optimising the use of medicines, reducing their waste and moving to generic alternatives where possible.

Interim medical director Dr Marina Hudson said that the cuts would not reduce any direct clinical care activities of Manx Care doctors, but rather looked at reducing their "additional programmed activities" such as teaching, governance and leadership.

Ms Cope said: “All of these measures will be risk-assessed, they will be very closely monitored as we move into the implementation phases of this.

“If any of these schemes are having an adverse impact on the quality of our services, and particularly the safety of our services, then we will reverse out those schemes.

“That is ultimately our red line in that we will not compromise the safety of our services.”

She added that discussions were continuing with the Department of Health and Social Care and Council of Ministers about how "the remaining financial gap is bridged".