Roundup: NHS financial woes putting strain on Britain's health services

The financial performance of Britain's National Health Service (NHS) has worsened considerably in the past year, a report by the National Audit Office revealed Tuesday.

More than two thirds of the health trusts set up to run NHS services in local areas have reported a deficit in 2015 and 2016, Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office (NAO), said Tuesday.

The report comes as local communities across England reacted with anger to "secretive" plans to save money by merging or closing hospitals, or downgrading some hospitals to part-time opening hours.

Reports also made front-page news Tuesday outlining plans that would require patients to show their passports when arriving at hospitals for treatment in a bid to curb so-called health tourism to Britain where health care is provided free to NHS patients.

In its new report, the NAO says the financial performance of NHS bodies worsened considerably in 2015 and 2016 and the trend was not sustainable.

In 2015 and 2016, NHS commissioners, trusts and foundation trusts reported a combined deficit of 1.85 billion pounds (2.31 U.S. billion dollars), three times the deficit position of 574 million pounds reported in 2014-15.

According to the NAO, the NHS entered the current financial year worse than expected. This year's plans were based on trusts ending 2015 and 2016 with a combined deficit of 1.8 billion pounds.

The fact that trusts ended the year with an even larger deficit means that they will, overall, need to make more savings than planned to reach the intended starting position, said the NAO report. Many of the savings made by NHS England in 2015 and 2016 were one-off in nature.

The report added there were indications that financial stress was having an impact on access to services and quality of care.

"Trusts' performance against important NHS access targets has worsened, and the NAO found an association between trusts' financial performance and their overall Care Quality Commission rating, with those that achieved lower quality ratings also reporting poorer average financial performance," the report said.

Spending by hospital and health trusts on agency and contract staff has slowed but was still significant at 3.7 billion pounds in 2015 and 2016. According to the NAO, it may take years to resolve workforce issues that affect the successful recruitment and retention of permanent staff, and reduce the need for agency staff.

Morse said: "With more than two-thirds of trusts in deficit in 2015-16 and an increasing number of clinical commissioning groups unable to keep their spending within budget, we repeat our view that financial problems are endemic and this is not sustainable."

"It is fair to say aggressive efficiency targets have helped to swell the ranks of trusts in deficit over the last few years," Morse said, adding there had been considerable effort and funding put toward stabilizing the system, but there was a way to go to demonstrate balanced resources and stability. Endit