Manx Care is projected to overspend by £5 million for the current financial year, according to new information revealed in Manx Care Management Accounts this week.
This week’s Manx Care board meeting received documents that Manx Care has already overspent £1.9 million from 1 April 2021 to 31 July 2021, with the remaining overspend forecast to take place in the period to 31 March 2022.
“Manx Care was created in large part to stop these overspends. While about 15% of the extra spending is attributed by Manx Care to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is concerning that staff and drug costs have blown out,” said Michael Josem of the Manx TaxPayers’ Alliance.
Overspend Causes
Manx Care documents revealed that around 16% of the overspend can be attributed to “additional costs in relation to Covid”, which amounts to approximately £600,000 in the financial year to date, and is expected to rise to £1.6 million through to the end of the current financial year.
The remaining budgeted overspend come from a variety of areas, including increased drug costs, reduced income from dental services, the risk of reduced income from the private patient unit, and reduced shop income. Approximately £1.5 million of overspend in the current financial year has come from a “significant overspend… attributable to Agency and Bank staff usage in Emergency Medicine and in Medicine – Management”.
Manx Care advised that some savings have been made by not completing the recruitment of some Manx Care management roles.
Manx Care established to stop annual overspends
Manx Care was substantially established to stop annual overspends. Indeed, a key catalyst for the establishment of Manx Care was the 2018 Sir Jonathan Michael report, which “was requested by the Isle of Man Treasury due to the large amount of overspend each year within the health service, as they needed to ensure financial viability for health and care for the future.”
Source Document
1 October edit: The following sentence was removed from the opening paragraph: “This £5 million overspend is in addition to the £4.9 million contingency already allocated for overspending by Manx Care, for a total overspend of approximately £9,948,000 this financial year, according to Manx Care.”
This is in response to the following comment from Manx Care regarding its accuracy “The £4.9m contingency forms part of Manx Care’s baseline budget allocation and is already included in the forecast. Therefore, the reported figure of £5m is the correct position and not the £9.9m referred to in the article”