St George’s Hospital has a whopping £10m deficit.
The figure emerged as the NHS crisis deepens and in a week when the King’s Fund said performance had declined so much since 2013 there was a real risk patient care would suffer.
Last year, we revealed the Tooting-based hospital was on course to make a staggering £91m of savings in just two years.
The trust’s cost improvement programme revealed targeted savings for the 2014/15 financial year of £45.2m and a further £45.8m this year.
Sadiq Khan, Tooting's Labour parliamentary candidate, said: “The news that our very own St George's now has a huge deficit of £10m should be a worry to us all.
"I know how hard all of the hospital staff work, but they have been let down by this government.
“Instead of spending money on patient care, the government wasted £3bn on a top-down reorganisation NHS which they promised they wouldn't do.
"As a result of the government’s mismanagement, St George's had to make £45 million worth of cuts last year, and will have to cut a further £43m in the next financial year.
"This together with the government's lack of planning for a winter crisis, has hit our hospital hard - and now we're all going to pay the price.”
Dan Watkins, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Tooting, said: "Last month I attended St George's Hospital's public board meeting to see for myself the challenges it faced following the winter spike in admissions.
"I have every confidence in the senior management at St George's and the hard-working staff there that the £10m deficit can be reversed. This represents just 1 per cent of total St George's income and I back the team to do it."
The CEO of St George’s Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Miles Scott, said: “The situation at St George’s is not an isolated one.
"Nationally, the NHS is under unprecedented pressure with a growing population needing access to treatment.
“This increase in pressure has expressed itself in financial strains meaning that at the end of this financial year we will report a deficit.
“We have plans in place to manage the increased demands on our services and are looking ahead to identify savings where they are possible.”
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