Where has the cash gone?

John Denham spoke out after the Daily Echo revealed yesterday that the trust which runs Southampton General, the Royal South Hants and the Princess Anne hospitals had fallen further into the red.

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust is battling to make savings of £15m by April 2005.

However, health chiefs are more than £2.5m worse off than they were in April - despite five months of cutbacks.

They have admitted the financial crisis could mean more job losses and ward closures.

Now Mr Denham, a former health minister, will hold face-to-face crisis talks with trust chairman Richard Keightley and chief executive Mark Hackett.

He urgently wants to know why the trust is so severely in debt - despite receiving record funding from the government.

Speaking out after the Daily Echo confronted him yesterday at Labour's annual party conference in Brighton, the Southampton Itchen MP said: "After the problems the trust has experienced this year I have arranged a meeting with the chairman and chief executive to ask some key questions.

"Why, when so much money has been pumped into the National Health Service and the trust over the past few years, they are having these financial problems?

"Where has the money been spent? How has the trust reorganised its services to make the most efficient use of the money and to treat the maximum number of patients?

"Why in the last performance ratings was the patients' experience - which is reported, remember, by patients - so poor?

"The truth is that a lot of money has been invested in hospitals trusts all over the country, including all over the south-east and Hampshire, yet many are doing much better than Southampton on financial management and patient experience.

"I am demanding answers to these questions urgently. The trust has recorded some tremendous achievements in some fields. For instance, waiting times for operations have improved dramatically which has made a massive difference to patients' lives.

"A lot of people, such as doctors and nurses, should be proud of these achievements. But the management have got some serious explaining to do about how the trust has found itself in this serious position.

"I want to make sure we have every penny accounted for. We need to make sure every penny is spent as efficiently as possible."

Mr Denham said he understood hospitals had been hit with big bills for recruiting extra doctors, after the European Union reduced the number of hours junior doctors were allowed to work.

But he said: "Other trusts have had to cope with this and they have managed it successfully."

He said: "The first step is to sit down with the management team and discuss just what has gone wrong.

"If, after hearing their explanations, I feel that I need to raise the issue with ministers, I am quite prepared to do that."

Fellow Labour Southampton MP Alan Whitehead has also pledged to talk to hospital chiefs about the crisis although he does not blame management.

He said: "I do think there are issues in hospitals, there are always shortages and there are always more funds we could spend.

"I don't think it's people wasting money. In terms of management, money changes have been made but they don't happen overnight.

"It's a case of how do we turn a very large ship around in the middle of the Atlantic."

"We want to have a large university hospital that brings things into our city, but there are issues that need looking at and they are planning to go over a lot of these issues. I'm talking to them shortly about a number of issues there, not just the budget."

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust launched a bid to save £15m after ending the last financial year in April £5m in debt.

As a result, the trust was stripped of its top three-star status in the Commission for Health Improvement's performance tables.

Bosses immediately put in place a 50 per cent recruitment freeze and scrapped overnight stays for patients awaiting operations.

They also put in place an action plan to reduce the debt.

But every single money-saving scheme has missed its target.

Staff reductions - nine permanent posts and 88 agency workers - have saved just £871,000 against a target of £1m.

Bills for medical equipment and drugs have fallen by £486,000 - not the £524,000 forecast and unidentified savings are still £2.4m behind target.

Health chiefs are meeting urgently with department heads to further trim budgets.

Bosses remain confident the savings can be made but they face being replaced by troubleshooters brought in by the Department of Health if they fail.