HEALTHCARE commissioners are aiming to find savings of more than £11 million in the next 12 months.

Alex Mitchell, chief finance officer at NHS Eastern Cheshire clinical commissioning group (CCG), told governors on Wednesday that a controlled deficit of £10.8 million for the end of 2019-20 has been agreed by NHS England.

That means national NHS regulators have agreed to pay the CCG £10.8 million in a ‘commissioner sustainability fund’ at the end of the next financial year – provided it can meet that deficit target.

But the CCG is set for an overall deficit of £22 million over the next 12 months – meaning it has to cut £11.2 million from that figure by March 31, 2020.

“We have got an active list of pipeline schemes that we are working on [to save money],” said Mr Mitchell.

“However, the challenge with those is delivering them within the next financial year, but we will go through it over the next couple of months in terms of how we look to mitigate that [shortfall].”

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A range of potential savings have been proposed to help it meet that target – but they are currently only worth £6.8 million.

That means health chiefs must come up with more ideas to save the remaining £4.4 million to meet NHS England’s target.

However, some of the schemes it has proposed so far are deemed ‘high risk’, meaning they might not come off – and the CCG would have to find more savings in order to meet the target.

Meanwhile, commissioners have made plans to fund capacity for a 2.2 per cent increase in elective admissions – when patients are referred to hospital for treatment in an appointment.

Those appointments are not set to be made at Macclesfield, Knutsford or Congleton’s hospitals though as East Cheshire NHS Trust has limited capacity – meaning some patients will be sent to hospitals further afield for their appointments.

“Clearly we need to provide for an increased growth in the complexity of patients,” Mr Mitchell added.

The CCG expects to rake in income of £301.8 million over the next 12 months, while it is set to spend £323.8 million.