Plans to cut £100million out of NHS Highland’s budget over the next three year will be outlined to the health board next week.
A cut of £47million is required in 2017/18 alone – 7% of NHS Highland’s entire budget.
Chief executive Elaine Mead described the targets as “unprecedented” – but said there are compelling reasons for change aside from financial pressures.
She will highlight an ageing population, changing workforce, difficulties with recruitment, staffing pressures, as well as rising costs and demands as reasons that NHS Highland has to the way it delivers its services.
Mrs Mead said: “Our quality and sustainability plan describes the national and local strategic context, and sets out a compelling case for change as well as NHS Highland’s approach to addressing some of the challenges.
“The plan sets out the vision and strategy through which to deliver the board’s corporate objectives.
“We are putting in place seven initiatives that relate back to people, quality and care. These will support the reduction of waste, harm and unwarranted variation, allow new models of care to be further developed and introduced and, in turn, will be more sustainable.”
These seven areas identified for 2017/18 are described as adult care, flow, new models of care, realistic medicine, drug costs, remodelling assets and continuous quality improvement.
Mrs Mead acknowledged that the cuts will not be easy but pointed to ongoing work that has already been done.
She said: “Significant redesign on models of care are ongoing from previous years such as out-of-hours, transforming out-patients, an office redesign and major service redesign and elements of these will be completed during 2017/18.”
She said NHS Highland has a good track record of realising savings through initiatives related to procurement, prescribing and quality improvement.
She said: “Although NHS Highland is well placed to deliver the new approaches, this will be challenging. The biggest hurdle is how best to speed up the pace of change while at the same time taking staff, communities and partners with us.”
