£13.5m health recovery plan for Fife – but board wants more detail before saying yes
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The region’s Integrated Joint Board - made up of representatives from Fife Council, NHS Fife and third sector organisation - is moving forward with its action plan which which include service reductions, increased thresholds and cuts to respite care.
Board members took the “difficult” decision at its meeting this week. It also decided to write to both NHS Fife and Fife Council to warn them that there will still be a need for additional money – even with the recovery plan and savings proposals.
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Hide AdAn extraordinary IJB meeting will be held in October, where members will review the plans in more detail and formally give the cuts, reductions, and increased thresholds permission to proceed.


This decision was a compromise after IJB members originally voted 10-3 in favour of rejecting the recovery plans. When the board was told that doing nothing was not an option, it agreed instead to approve the plans “in principle”.
The blueprint includes £12 million of proposals for temporary service reductions, increased thresholds for social care packages, and cuts for respite care provision. It also includes other, lower value proposals including the reprovision of assessment and rehabilitation centres to community-based model, the potential realignment of staff at the front door of Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital, and more.
However, the plan is light on details. There is no mention of which services will be reduced or which thresholds will be increased – or by how much. Without that detail, some IJB members refused to support the plans.
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Hide Ad“I recognise that we must do something to bring the finances back in line, and every stone needs to be turned over, and we need to examine every opportunity,” Chris McKenna, medical director for NHS Fife, said.
“But at the moment, what’s described in the paper, I struggle to support. It’s hard for me as a person in NHS Fife who is responsible for quality and safety to endorse this because I don’t have the details.”
Lynne Parsons, employee director for NHS Fife, read a joint statement from herself and Debbie Fyfe, joint trades union secretary, along similar lines - they too needed more information to support the recovery plan.
“We have agreed we need to make significant savings at pace and we’re committed to working in partnership to achieve those savings, but we cannot support these proposals,” Ms Parsons said.
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Hide Ad“I don’t have a high level of confidence from this paper that there is a full understanding of the risks associated with the proposals and I don’t take confidence that savings will be delivered.”
Other members raised specific concerns about the reductions and cuts, but regardless of concerns, HSCP's chief finance officer, Audrey Valente, said the difficult decisions aren't going to get any easier if they are postponed.
"It won’t come as any surprise that this was uncomfortable for us to come forward with this recovery plan, but we’re in the territory of making difficult decisions," she said.
"We’re never going to please everybody no matter what we bring forward, and the difficult decisions will have impacts."
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Hide AdShe said the board would be "remiss to not agree something today" because the longer this goes on, the worse the situation will become.
Ms Valente said: "At some point we’re either going to have to say yes to this or we will have to ask for full funding from our partners."
After the vote, the senior leadership team came back with new plans to approve the recovery plan “in principle as a direction of travel”. This was approved12 votes to two.
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