Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13 - Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital

2. Our Trust Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust 33
Annual Report and Accounts 2012/13
• Maintain and improve the quality of
existing patient services
• Manage increasing demand due
to demographic changes and
advances in medical innovation and
technology and cost pressures
• Meet the expectations (including
those of taxpayers and patients) of
increasing service excellence
• Cope with year-on-year reductions
in overall NHS budget, which for the
RD&E equates to savings of around
4% a year
• Respond to growing competition
from new providers of NHS services
• Meet regulatory standards and targets.
The report highlighted that staff pay
remains our largest single item of
expenditure and it is right and proper
not to ring-fence this area as being
beyond consideration. The Board
signed up to the work undertaken by
the Consortium because it believed
that it has a responsibility to consider
how taxpayer funding may be more
efficiently used in order to protect both
the continued delivery of high quality
healthcare and employment.
Our transformational
change programme is
designed to enable us to
deliver clinically safe and
financially sustainable
care for our patients
within an increasingly
challenging economic
environment.