Finance and our budget
We are facing tough financial times. Our current spending exceeds our allocated budget, creating a deficit. This means we have less in our budget than we need to keep providing the services as we currently do. While NHS Shetland and the Shetland Islands Council have provided additional funding to balance our finances, they also have their own financial challenges so we need to find ways to reduce the deficit so we don’t rely on additional support. To do this we need to consider how we can spend our money wisely, and where we can save money, to make sure we can keep providing our health and care services.
What we will do
- We spend a lot on temporary staff, such as locum and agency staff. Hiring temporary staff is expensive, however we can find it even harder to find people to work here permanently because Shetland is remote. We are looking at ways we can build strong, resilient and local staffing to reduce the temporary staffing cost.
- We will also look at different care solutions that can help improve efficiency and that work within our unique remote and rural location.
- We will work with other organisations to find ways we can provide the best for our community.
- We will work to reducing overspending and will review our spending and finances regularly.
Our reports
We produce finance reports, these include our annual budget report, and our Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP). Our budget shows the money we have each year and the things that we need to spend money on. Our Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) is a five year plan for our finances. It looks at what is happening and what money we expect to have over the 5 years.
We also produce quarterly performance and finance monitoring reports which shows the information for each quarter of the year (April to June, July to September, October to December, and January to March). You can read our reports and watch the IJB meetings using the links provided on our Performance page.