HOSPITAL bosses in Worcestershire say patient care will not suffer as they attempt to claw back £60 million in five years.

Leaders who run Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester say they can keep on improving the health of their patients despite the “huge” challenge ahead.

The Government has ordered national combined NHS efficiency savings of £20 billion nationally (four per cent of the total NHS budget) over five years.

Worcestershire’s share is £167 million by 2014/15, beginning this year (2011/12).

Hospitals must shoulder £60 million of savings over these five years.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which also runs the Alexandra Hospital, Redditch and Kidderminster Hospital, must save £23 million in the this financial year alone.

Closing the gap equates to saving £13 million a year but the trust also has historic debts which is why hospital bosses have had to fall back on outside financial help.

NHS Worcestershire, the organisation which holds the purse strings for county healthcare, has already pledged an extra £7.3 million to the trust to help our hospitals from its own reserves.

The trust also needed £6 million in support from NHS Worcestershire in the previous year (2009/10).

Trust chairman Harry Turner told members of the health overview and scrutiny committee (HOSC): “The challenge that faces us is huge. There’s inflation pressure. That’s driving up our costs.

“It’s particularly high in some areas such as drugs and we have an ageing population which is driving the demand for our services.”

“For every £100 the trust received in income last year it needed £102.50 but instead received around £98.50,” he said.

“We have to do what we did last year but for less. We won’t do anything that compromises patient safety but we have to make efficiencies as well.”

Mr Turner said any service changes would involve GPs, patient groups like LINk, staff, NHS leaders, the shadow council of governors which is designed to hold the trust to account and the strategic health authority, the regional arm of the Department of Health.

The focus will be on efficiency, reducing length of stay for patients and dependence on expensive locum and agency staff and increasing the use of operating theatres.

The trust has in the past said frontline jobs could go but how and where has not yet been revealed.

The trust has yet to reactivate its application to become a foundation trust which it may do on Sunday, August 7.

This would give it greater freedom to spend NHS cash in a way that suits local people.

• Your Worcester News reporter was the only member of the media at this meeting.