Stafford Hospital administration process cost £20million
It cost almost £20million to send special administrators into overhaul Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - millions more than was first predicted, it emerged today.
Health regulator Monitor, who appointed the administrators, originally budgeted £15.25m for the work but the timescale had to be extended twice.
The administration process, led by Alan Bloom, Alan Hudson, and Dr Hugo Mascie-Taylor, ended in November and has seen a downgrade of Stafford's A&E, maternity and children's departments.
The hospital is now run by the new University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust after a merger with the University Hospital of North Staffordshire Trust.
The total cost of the process was £19.5 million. That figure covered the work to find and implement a solution to the problems at the trust - £17.35m - and £2.15m was paid to the administrators to run both County Hospital in Stafford and Royal Stoke University Hospital at the same time.
Dr David Bennett, chief executive at Monitor, today defended the rising cost.
He said: "Mid Staffs was failing its patients and relying on tens of millions of pounds of emergency funding from central government each year.
"If nothing had been done the trust would have been £100 million 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.
"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."
Monitor plans to publish a detailed breakdown of the costs, alongside a report setting out some of the lessons learned, in due course.
During the course of special administration, Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust paid Ernst & Young, the team supporting the TSAs, for additional professional services work costing £3.55 million.
This work was needed because the trust did not have the specialist staff required.
Monitor plans to bring as much of this work in-house as possible in order to reduce the cost of similar work in the future.
It emerged last week that the TSAs claimed expenses of more than £1,000-a-day in the time they were in charge of the health trust.
The Ernst & Young team spent £687,928 on expenses, including £250,000 on hotels, £250,000 on train tickets, £63,000 on taxis, £59,000 on food and drink and £54,000 on cars.
