AN investigation has been opened following a sudden deterioration in the Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s financial position.

The trust – which provides acute and specialist services to people across Surrey and surrounding areas – needs help managing its finances, after its financial position for 2015/16 was worse than expected.

NHS Improvement, which from April 1, 2016, took on the role for overseeing NHS trusts, has opened an investigation to look at why the trust’s financial position deteriorated at such pace and what factors caused the deterioration, so that it can support the trust to rebalance its finances.

The watchdog has acknowledged the trust’s efforts to manage its finances better, including its recent appointment of a ‘turnaround director’ to address its financial issues, but wants to ensure everything possible is being done to tackle the situation.

NHS Improvement also wants to examine what support it can offer the trust to reduce patient waiting times, as some patients have recently been waiting too long in A&E or for cancer treatment.

Since October last year, the trust has had an interim chief executive, and NHS Improvement also wants to help the trust to fill this vacancy permanently so that it has more stable leadership.

Claudia Griffith, regional director at NHS Improvement, said: “We know Royal Surrey County Hospital is taking steps to get its finances back on track, but we want to find out more about why it is losing money and how we can help fix it.

“We will be looking into what support it might need to reduce how long patients are waiting for some treatments and improve its short and long term financial planning and management.”

No decision has yet been made about whether NHS Improvement will need to take regulatory action at the trust, but any decision will be announced at the end of the investigation.