Sending in special administrators to the troubled trust cost the regulator £19.5m (including VAT) over 18 months. This includes the cost of work to find and implement a solution at Mid-Staffs and the cost of having the Trust Special Administrators run the hospitals at the same time.
The work had originally been budgeted at £15.25m, but timescales were extended on two occasions.
During the course of special administration, Mid Staffs also paid EY, the team supporting the TSAs, for additional professional services work at a cost of £3.55m. This work was needed because the trust did not have the specialist staff required, Monitor said. The costs have since been reimbursed by the Department of Health.
Monitor chief executive David Bennett said that, without the intervention by Monitor, Mid-Staffs would have been more than £100m in debt by 2018.
‘Our priority was securing safe and sustainable services for the people of Staffordshire, and while special administration took longer than expected it nevertheless led to substantial investment in local health services,’ he said.
‘However, Trust Special Administration remains a last resort for failing NHS providers. What we have learned from our experience is that the solution to a struggling provider lies as much within the local health economy as in the failing institution itself. We are already taking a swifter and more cost-effective approach to dealing with other challenged local health economies. In areas like Milton Keynes, King’s Lynn and Tameside in Greater Manchester, our focus is now on working closely with other NHS bodies to find local solutions and bring about the improvements needed.’
The regulator added that it plans to bring as much of this work in-house as possible in order to avoid future costs.
