Troubled NHS Highland is 'already acting', says chairman
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THE chairman of NHS Highland said the board has already started addressing concerns raised by the Public Audit Committee.
It comes after the Holyrood committee this week ruled poor leadership and complacency about budgetary oversight contributed to NHS Highland requiring an extra £2.5 million from the Scottish Government in order to break even in 2013/14.
Reporting a number of observations and recommendations this week, the Public Audit Committee raised concerns around issues of financial management and reporting, board communications and vacancy management.
Public Audit Committee Convener Paul Martin MSP said: "In 2013/14, for the first time in 11 years, NHS Highland requested a loan - brokerage - from the Scottish Government to enable it to break even against its revenue and capital budgets.
"Given this, we expected to find a robust and transparent system of checks and balances that showed exactly how that situation had developed and how and why the decision to request brokerage was arrived at. This was not the case. Instead, the evidence from NHS Highland was unclear and contradictory to an extent that we question how well informed the board were and when they decided to seek brokerage."
He went on: "The fact that, for example, Raigmore Hospital continued to overspend year on year, despite £5 million extra funding in 2012/13, suggests to us a culture of complacency about budgetary oversight at the hospital and at the NHS Highland Board.
"The slow progress in addressing the causes of the overspending at Raigmore was exacerbated by the practice of creating compensatory underspends elsewhere in NHS Highland in order to break even.
"What was clear to the committee was that without brokerage there could have been serious repercussions for patients. The lack of transparency about the need to seek brokerage meant there was little opportunity for the public and staff to understand early on why brokerage was being sought and the potential impact on services of paying it back over three years."
Board chairman Garry Coutts said the board respected the role of the Public Audit Committee and accepted the contents of its report.
He added: "We welcomed the opportunity to give evidence to the committee and we believe we have fully co-operated. We have already acted to address the concerns the committee has raised, both in its latest report and previously, and we are determined to ensure that our financial management and our governance practices are of the highest standards."
