£9m cost-cutting exercise to take place at West Midlands Ambulance Service to balance budget
Almost £9m of costs must be cut at West Midland Ambulance Service due to major financial pressures, chiefs revealed today.
Bosses say they will be forced to reduce overtime and rely on "salary sacrifice" to meet the demands.
The trust is projecting an underlying deficit of £46.8m but is expecting to receive some funding from organisations to help bridge the budget gap.
A total of £8.7m will be raised through “financial efficiencies”, which will bring the deficit to £1.1m with work ongoing to identify cash to fully break-even.
However, only around £5.1m of savings have been identified, with £3.6m outstanding.
The service plans to train staff to be able handle both 999 and 111 calls to “naturally” reduce the number of working hours. Bosses confirmed no one would lose their jobs, but the move would see the service work more effectively with staff so they can carry out both roles.
It is expected to receive a projected £7.3 million for both 999 and 111 call centre services with £4.3m confirmed for 111.
A further £23.4m of support funding from the Black Country Integrated Care System has been projected , ambulance board papers show.
The move is being by the Senior Efficiency Group (SEG) and directors who had started to identify cuts for 2022/2023 last month, with meetings taken place between various teams over the proposals
Karen Rutter, interim director of finance, said at a board meeting on Wednesday a “robust” budget-setting process had been undertaken to identify the financial pressures.
She said the issues were not unique to the trust but were facing the whole of the NHS for 2022/2023 and the budget did contain “some risks” over income and expenditure.
She added: “We have a starting deficit (which we will be) mitigating through various efficiencies which are to be met and assumptions about levels of income. Some are confirmed and some are not as we speak.”
It comes after the ambulance service warned patients were being put at “catastrophic risk” of harm due to handover delays at hospitals last year, with the issue continuing to impact the service.
Health chiefs previously took the unprecedented step of moving handover delays to “risk rating 25” – the highest possible level of risk.
