BARNSLEY Hospital reported a multi-million pound deficit last year amidst concerns about the ‘fragile’ financial health of the NHS, new figures have revealed.

The figures show Barnsley Hospital reported a £3.3m deficit in the 2023/24 financial year, meaning the trust’s spending exceeded its income.

It was a significantly deeper deficit than the year before, when it reported a £992,000 overspend.

Overall, the deficit last year accounted for one per cent of the trust’s revenue.

Across England, NHS provider trusts reported a £1.2bn overspend in the 2023/24 financial year - 0.9 per cent of revenue.

Collectively, they reported a £448m overspend the year before or about 0.4 per cent of revenue.

The Nuffield Trust said it puts the sector in a similar overall position to 2019/20, when ‘financial instability left it poorly equipped to deal with the pandemic’.

Sally Gainsbury, senior policy analyst at the think-tank, said: “These findings reveal just how fragile the financial health of the NHS is, which should sound alarm bells over the government’s promise of extensive reforms but with no new money to pay for them.”

She added the government’s aim to shift care out of hospitals and reduce waiting lists requires community and mental health care to be adequately resourced.

She said: “With over six million people on an NHS waiting list - many of them needing treatment in a hospital - it is not realistic to assume expenditure on acute hospitals can just be switched to expand other services such as community and mental health care.”

As of December - the latest figures available - there were 21.821 patients waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment at the Gawber Road site - up slightly from 21,682 in November, and 21,690 in December 2023.

Of those, 92 had been waiting for longer than a year.

The median waiting time from referral to treatment at Barnsley Hospital was 11 weeks at the end of December - up from ten weeks in November.

The figures also show the deepest overspends are in the north-west and the Midlands which, along with the north-east and Yorkshire, have also seen the steepest declines in financial health since 2022/23.

Meanwhile, the steepest declines were recorded among acute hospital trusts in the most deprived areas, while modest improvements were seen in more affluent areas.

Ms Gainsbury warned this is ‘particularly concerning’.

“It is well known that people living in poverty have poorer health, more complex conditions and die younger,” she said.

“A strategy that targets investment in these areas, rather than allowing it to flow away from them, is needed to reverse these worrying trends.”