LUHFT currently has one of the largest financial deficits in the country, and as part of our wider improvement plan, we are focusing on financial sustainability.
Our Cost Improvement Plan (CIP) for financial year 2024/2025, needs to deliver a £99.6 million permanent reduction in costs. Every Trust in the country has a CIP, so we are not alone in the size of the challenge in needing to improve our financial outputs.
What are we doing?
A significant amount of work is ongoing to achieve our savings target. This includes reducing the amount we are spending day to day to prevent our underlying deficit (spending more than we are receiving) from worsening, but also implementing new projects that will improve the quality of our work, and efficiency and effectivity in what we do – meaning we can improve our services and patient care, whilst also making a saving.
We’ve already identified initial schemes of significant value across LUHFT, and now need to translate these into actionable projects. You may have already started to see these take shape, or may be part of a team involved in the plans.
What have we done?
Last year we delivered the Trust’s best ever performance on our Cost Improvement Programme – with £81.8m in total with £42.2m being permanent recurrent cost reductions. This is an exceptional achievement by all colleagues. This should give us all confidence as to what we can deliver by working together. This performance was supported by a tried and tested improvement programme approach that enables us to identify opportunities and implement cost improvements safely and in a managed way. An approach we will continue into this year.
James Sumner, Chief Executive.
How can I get involved?
Throughout the financial year we will be keeping Team LUHFT updated on our progress, and sharing some of the amazing success stories as the projects continue to develop.
We’re also asking you to get involved and share with us your ideas on how we can improve our financial sustainability through our Saving Together initiative.
Everyone has a role to play in supporting cost improvement. As part of our work to deliver improved financial sustainability at LUHFT, we are asking all colleagues to consider what you can do at a service level to make a difference.
It could be as simple as making sure you turn off the lights in your office or ensuring that you shut down any electrical items, such as your laptop or desktop computer, when you leave for the day.
You may have an idea on how you could improve a process in your area – as often when we improve quality, we almost always reduce cost too. By working together and re-thinking the way we do certain things, we can improve quality, productivity and reduce waste.
We want to shine a light on your great ideas and hopefully inspire others to get involved. It could be that something you are doing with your team or on your ward could be mirrored by others in the Trust. So please get in touch and tell us what you’re doing, and we can share it with Team LUHFT!
Get in touch
You can contribute any ideas you may have, or share your savings success stories, by emailing: SavingTogether