Trust CEOs decry ‘undeliverable’ and damaging financial plans

NHS trusts have committed to financial plans without properly considering their consequences, with finance directors turning a blind eye to unrealistic forecasts under pressure from NHS England, some of the country’s top NHS chief executives have warned.

Many of the senior trust leaders speaking at HSJ’s Top CEOs roundtable admitted they had gone further than they wanted to in agreeing to higher levels of planned savings.

At the roundtable event, University College London Hospitals Foundation Trust CEO David Probert said there were “definite challenges to the professionalism of some of our fantastic finance leaders”, who were “being asked to put in place plans that [they] may not fully agree are deliverable or are highly risky.”

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Source: HSJ, 7 July 2023