Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System's deficit could worsen

Tracy Dowling urged people to remain hopeful about the service's financial deficit

A senior health official has warned that a care system's financial deficit will worsen without innovation.

The Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System is struggling to keep within its £2.5bn annual budget and could accrue a £60m deficit by the end of the financial year.

It would represent a rise in debt from £39m in August last year.

Interim chief executive Tracy Dowling urged people not to lose hope and said a "better place" could be achieved.

"I do think that it will be really easy in a situation of extreme financial constraint to lose hope and think this is just about cuts and about reducing," she said.

"Actually, this is also a time we need as leaders to be hopeful."

'Difficult choices'

Integrated care systems are partnerships of organisations that plan, buy and provide health and care services in a region.

A shortfall in efficient programme delivery and increased workforce pressures driving higher levels of spending have worsened issues in Mid and South Essex, the Local Democracy Reporting Service wrote.

Ms Dowling said as it stood there was insufficient "change capacity" inside the system needed for the "quantum of change we need to deliver in a relatively short period of time".

She added: "We will have to make difficult choices and some of those things will be in the short term - perhaps things you wouldn't want to do in the longer term - because we have got to get control of the financial situation."

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