TEMPORARY reductions in hospital beds and cutbacks on agency staff and overtime, are among measures introduced by Gwent health bosses in a multi-million pound cost-cutting programme.

Gwent Healthcare Trust must cut costs by more than £17m this year to balance its books, due to several financial pressures, from a shortfall in Wales-wide NHS funding, to a loss of £1.1m income through the Assembly's decision to abolish hospital car parking charges.

The latter, announced just a month before its April 1 implementation, was a late addition to finance chiefs' woes.

The trust hopes to find the majority - £10.4m - of savings through reductions in service budgets, such as a £2.5m saving from the acute sector, £2.4m from diagnostic, therapies and support services, and £2.3m from community and mental health services.

Details of these measures are being finalised, but the acute sector also aims to save a further £500,000 through a reduction of bed capacity and redirection of some beds for less cost-intensive patients during the summer.

Beds were also temporarily decommissioned last year, though several weeks later than planned due to unexpectedly sustained emergency demand.

The trust also wants to recruit permanent staff for extended hours in operating theatres, to reduce more expensive alternatives like agency staff and overtime. This could also save £500,000.

Allied to this is a target saving of £1.5m based on reducing cancelled operations, and late starts and early finishes in theatre.

Improved booking of patients and scheduling of theatre use is the key here, the ultimate aim to minimise the need for costly weekend and other waiting list initiative work.

The trust usually has to find around £4m of cost savings a year, but for 2008/09 must also tackle a £7m shortfall in overall funding, £2m of extra staff payments through the Agenda For Change pay modernisation programme, and almost £3m extra as a contribution toward meeting plans agreed with Local Health Boards over the amount of patients it treats.