Robot surgery and cost cutting measures on horizon for NHS trust
The Surrey and Sussex NHS trust held its annual general meeting on Thursday
Robots will be performing more operations, including general surgery and gynaecology at a Surrey NHS hospital trust seeking to introduce “significant savings”, a board meeting heard.
The Surrey and Sussex NHS trust held its much delayed annual general meeting on Thursday, March 30, where attendees heard from its chairperson, chief executive, and head of finance.
The afternoon meeting, which board members suggested may have led to its lower than usual attendance, was broken into three sections: a review of the year, a run through of its financial health, and questions from the floor.
Chairperson Richard Shaw led off proceedings explaining the AGM should have taken place in autumn last year but was delayed because of the late filing of its 2021/22 audited accounts.
Chief executive Angela Stevenson told the meeting that the 2021/22 year was heavily influenced by the “significant impact” of covid with “very tired” staff “having to work under pressure”. This created a backlog the trust was only beginning to get back under control.
She said: “Staff were working with a disease that we didn’t know how to treat.
“We had high staff absences due to covid or due to family members having covid.
“Since then we’ve really got to grips with the backlog. We started to work through but at the start of 2022 these numbers were at their peak.”
Post pandemic, she said, there was a huge increase in patients seeking primary care compounded by the increase in “baseline complexity” as cases were left untreated during the pandemic.”
Ms Stevenson praised the trust for delivering robotic surgery for the first time and that it would be rolled out further to include general surgery and gynaecology services.
They will also be investing in services with a new MRI department on the horizon – including new CT scanners at East Surrey and Crawley hospitals.
The trust also plans to work in partnership with other groups to better manage the health of the population rather than solely focus on its role as an acute hospital.
On finances, the meeting heard how its deficit continues to grow – even not including the covid years.
It expects to run at a £26.5m deficit for 2022/23. This will be the first time the trust has run at a deficit since at least 2013/14 as spending pushes towards £400m a year.
Chief finance officer Paul Simpson said this could be partly attributed to an increase in staff costs. The hospital expects to take on an extra 130 new nurses.
He said: “Now we have to recover the growth in costs that has happened and now we are (looking at) a significant savings plan.”
They were, however, quick to say “there should be no reason why we accept any reductions in quality of (care) for patients and that before any cuts were made there would be full impact assessments on cost improvement plans.”