THE organisation running Worcestershire Royal Hospital has announced it could end this financial year £27.6 million in the red – almost three times its initial prediction.

Although Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust had initially forecast it would end the current financial year with a £9.8 million deficit, it later revised this to £15 million following an extremely high level of demand throughout the summer.

But following more than a month of “unprecedented” pressure on hospital services across the county the organisation has announced it was already £17.2 million in the red at the end of December and now expects to end the financial year with a £27.6 million deficit.

This figure represents 7.6 per cent of the trust’s expected income this financial year.

Yesterday the trust failed to respond to your Worcester News’s request for an interview about the deficit, but in a monthly financial report the trust’s deputy chief executive Chris Tidman said the situation had been primarily caused by a loss in income as a result of a large number of elective operations being cancelled and the extremely high cost of hiring temporary staff.

"In order to mitigate patient safety risk the trust opened all of its available surge capacity, including at times the use of elective beds and recovery areas – all of which required additional temporary staffing, diagnostics and consumables,” he said.

“This also had the consequence of the cancellation of high numbers of elective patients, in order to prioritise the acute admissions.

“The net impact of the above factors resulted in an in-month deficit for December of £3.5 million, compared to a revised forecast deficit of £2.3 million.

“This is clearly far worse than originally anticipated and represents the worst financial performance of any month so far this year.”

The trust ended the 2013-14 financial year with a £14.2 million deficit, more than £2 million higher than it had forecast.

A long-awaited plan to reorganise hospital services in the county – which some have feared could result in the closer of the Alex’s A&E department – is being examined by the West Midlands Clinical Senate.

But chairman of pressure group Save the Alex – which has been campaigning to preserve hospital services in the county since 2012 – Neal Stote said he did not believe this was the answer.

Saying he believed a complete revamp of the way the NHS in the county is run – such as merging parts of the county with other health trusts in Birmingham or elsewhere – was the only answer, Mr Stote said: “It’s time to grow up.

“If it says Birmingham, Gloucester or Cheltenham name above the door doesn’t really matter as long as the services are sustainable.

“We need to think outside the box. Redditch is much more suited to being connected to the area to the north in terms of transport links.

“NHS England has to stop pottering out the edges. Let’s take the bull by the horns – if we don’t we’ll be having this conversation again in 18 months’ time.”

Mr Tidman has said the trust is working to reduce its reliance on temporary staff and secure emergency borrowing so it is able to meet its spending commitments for the rest of the year.

Earlier this year the organisation was one of 19 hospital trusts reported to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt for failing to balance its budget in the last financial year.