MOBILE operating theatres could be introduced to Worcestershire hospitals to carry out elective operations quicker and avoid the loss of government funding caused by sending patients to private providers.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has found itself under significant pressure in recent months, which has had a knock-on effect across the organisation.

There are currently 22,800 patients in the county waiting for elective operations, 2,663 of whom have waited longer than 18 weeks, and last month the organisation announced it expected to end the financial year with a £27.6 million deficit – almost twice the previous year’s figure.

At a recent meeting the organisation's chief operating officer Chris Tidman announced this had been revised to £25.9 million, but said much remained to be done to keep the figure as low as possible.

Speaking at the meeting board member Andrew Sleigh said it was important as many elective procedures were carried out within the trust as possible to avoid a loss in income as a result of cancelling operations or referring them to the private sector, and introducing mobile theatres may be a way to do this.

The trust – which runs Redditch’s Alexandra Hospital, Worcestershire Royal Hospital and Kidderminster Hospital – is paid a set figure by the area’s Clinical Commissioning Group for every operation it carries out, so cancelling procedures or referring them to the private sector means a loss in income it would otherwise have received.

Mr Sleigh said: “We’ve been pushing hard to be more imaginative about how we can get elective work in despite emergency pressures.

“We’ve talked about having mobile surgeries or opening more theatres at the Alex.

“I’m not convinced we've been pushing as hard as we could.”

Mobile theatres are large portable cabins, similar in appearance to shipping containers, containing a number of rooms including a main operating room, recovery and anaesthetic rooms as well as a changing area and a utility cupboard.

Mr Tidman said the problem had been compounded by the fact that Worcestershire’s health service is extremely under-funded when compared with similar sized trusts elsewhere in the country.

“If we compare Worcestershire to Shropshire or Hereford we are about 40 per cent lower than the neighbouring trusts,” he said.

“That to me doesn’t seem right. But unless there is a change in (government) policy, we are where we are.”

Board member Stephen Howarth said he hoped the government reviewed its funding formulas as soon as possible so patients in Worcestershire were not adversely affected.

The trust ended the 2013-14 financial year with a £14.2 million deficit, more than £2 million higher than it had predicted, and last April forecast it would end this year with a £9.8 million deficit.

Earlier this year the organisation was one of 19 hospital trusts reported to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt for failing to balance its budget.