Dorset County Hospital Trust 'living beyond its means'

Monitor announced that the trust had ‘failed to comply with its general duty to exercise its functions effectively, efficiently and economically’.

It comes as the Dorchester hospital faces a deficit of up to £7.4million this financial year - March 30 2010.

Monitor has stressed that it has no reason for concerns as to the quality of the clinical care provided by the trust to its patients.

Derek Smith, the hospital trust’s new chief executive, welcomed the involvement of Monitor and said his new team was ready to face up to and tackle the challenge set before them.

He said: “Over the past 18 months the financial problems of the trust have grown and action was not taken quickly enough to address these issues.

“We are now facing a deficit of up to £7.4 million this financial year.

“Our new executive team are working on a daily basis with Monitor and all our other health partners to put together a plan that will safeguard the long term future of hospital services in west Dorset and stabilise our finances.

“The support of all our partners – our patients, staff, community, local media and all our health agency partners – will be important if we are to implement a really effective plan.”

He added: “Monitor makes clear in their statement that we need to be effective and efficient in the way we deliver services and we need to live within our means.

“I am pleased too that Monitor affirmed that it had no reason for concern as to the quality of clinical care provided by the trust to its patients.

“As much as we would all like to have everything we ask for, we all know that is unrealistic, particularly in the current economic climate.

“Our job is therefore to secure the maximum resources we can and then to make the best use of these and deliver the very best health services we can within the budget available.

“This may mean we are going to have some difficult decisions and choices to make, particularly in the short term.

“Clearly the trust has been living beyond its means in the past 18 months and we need to bring our financial affairs back within financial balance.

“Monitor has set us the task to ‘design and deliver a strategic plan that achieves longer term sustainability and financial stability’.

“We are ready to rise to the challenge of this task, for the long term benefit of everyone in Dorset.”

Michel Hooper-Immins, patient governor for Dorset County Hospital, encouraged members of the public to become members of the trust to have their say.

“The involvement of local people is much more important than outside agencies.

“It’s important local people have their say.

“I’d encourage people to sign up as members of the trust so that they can have their voices heard.”

He added: “One of the problems is we treat the hospital as a business, which it isn’t really.

“The hospital provides urgent sanctuary for many people who rely on it when they’re ill, we shouldn’t treat it as a restaurant or shoe shop, the hospital can’t go bankrupt.”