Government will not give trusts cash to buy themselves out of crippling PFI contracts, DH leader reveals

Matthew Kershaw, director of provider delivery at the Department of Health (DH), told delegates at this week’s Innovation Expo 2011 in London that while the Government was planning to look more closely at the issue of PFI, there would be no golden goose.

He added: “At the moment a lot of organisations are saying that PFI is the reason they cannot achieve foundation trust (FT) status. We need to first assess if that is true. We do not think it is only that. It is likely that the number that say they have an issue with PFI is 10 times greater than those that really do.

At the moment a lot of organisations are saying that PFI is the reason they cannot achieve foundation trust (FT) status. We need to assess if that is true 

“Once we know the full scale of the problem we will look first at clinical reconfiguration of the organisation to make PFI work as well as it can do. It may be that a small organisation with a big PFI could join with another organisation to make better use of facilities.”

And he said that, while the DH might look at changing some payment structures, it was not going to bail out trusts with huge payouts.

“There is a real danger that the NHS just says ‘we want someone to give us loads of money so we can get FT status’. That undermines what FTs are all about, which is getting themselves into a sustainable position.

“People need to be very clear; there is no big bag of cash we will give them to solve PFI issues.”

At the conference he also revealed those trusts that have still not managed to secure FT status will have to sign formal agreements by 31 March setting out how they intend to make the necessary improvements.

People need to be very clear; there is no big bag of cash we will give them to solve PFI issues

“It has taken us seven years to get half of trusts to FT status,” he said. “We now have just three years to do the rest, and that includes some of the most-challenging trusts, and the current economy means that will be even more difficult.

“We will be putting in formal agreements by 31 March between SHAs, trusts and the DH, which will say what they need to do, when they need to do it by, and how they are going to do it. It will be a formal statement which aims to get everyone to FT status by 1 April 2014.

“There will be some organisations that can’t do it and we are going to have to change some things in the system. But it is not about us giving a set of answers. The point of FTs is about the organisations taking responsibility for themselves."