TREATING around twice the number of patients it expected to this year, the Isle of Wight NHS is facing a £12 million deficit — almost £7.5 million more than hoped.
The cost of drafting in agency staff and cancelling elective surgery to deal with the surge in patient numbers have been blamed for making it impossible for the Isle of Wight NHS Trust to hit its £4.6 million deficit target.
It also missed out on around £3.5 million of additional money expected to come from the Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), which sees the Island's healthcare services link up with mainland trusts.
The trust failed to hit the targets required to access the funding, despite the plan being ranked one of the top five in the country.
At today’s (Wednesday) Isle of Wight NHS Trust board meeting, chief executive Karen Baker said the targets were missed after the trust was overwhelmed in December.
St Mary's Hospital has struggled to cope with patient numbers throughout the year and some elective surgery has been cancelled in order to free up beds for other patients.
Hospital income from an in-patient is around a third of what it would get from an elective surgery patient.
The trust has been forced to pay for costly agency staff in order to look after the high volume of patients, including some of whom are fit to leave but don't have an appropriate place to go or the right care at home.
Executive medical director Dr Mark Pugh said: "We have nearly double the number of medical patients than expected.
"We need to have one consultant per 20 to 30 beds, so we simply have to hire extra staff to look after extra patients.
"If we don't see a change on the Isle of Wight so we reduce the number of in-patients we get, then we would have to re-think the medical model."
The news, revealed at a trust board meeting today (Wednesday) follows the Isle of Wight Clinical Commissioning Group's announcement that it needs to save £1 million a month for the next two years.