STANDARDS of patient care across parts of Kent could decline as health trusts struggle to cope with spiralling debts running into millions of pounds.

A report by county councillors has warned health trusts in Kent and Medway, which together spend £1.3billion a year, are nearly £20million in debt and money which should be spent on improving patient care is instead often being used to pay debts off.

It calls on health chiefs to do more to live within their budgets and not overspend.

The report, which has been produced by Kent County Council’s cross-party NHS scrutiny committee, paints a bleak picture of the state of health care funding right across the county despite record amount of investment an a nine per cent increase in funding this year.

It says the risk of a decline in services is greatest in east Kent, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells as a result of health and primary care trusts overspending by £19.7million in 2003.

Councillors have warned the savings plans being implemented by some hospital trusts may not be “attainable.”

In particular, they say a package of cost-cutting measures being implemented by the East Kent Hospital Trust is a “major cause of worry.” It has the largest single deficit - £11.3million although health chiefs insist they are on course to stabilise their funding problems.

In addition, efforts by primary care trusts – which are responsible for general GP services – to invest more cash to improve services are being hampered because of the level of debts they inherited when they were created in 2002.

The plight of health trusts has been recognised by the Department of Health, which gave the Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority a loan of £17million to help bridge the shortfall.

Councillors are warning that may not be enough to get trusts out of difficulty.

Cllr Dr Tony Robinson (Con), chairman of KCC’s NHS Scrutiny Committee, said the report showed “significant problems” in Kent.

“Despite much hard work, financial restraints have hampered development and improvement of health care. Progress towards developing primary care services has been hindered by the need to focus on debt and saving targets across the health economy,” he said.

The situation was aggravated by trusts resorting to more and more agency staff because of a chronic recruitment crisis in the NHS.

Health chiefs have acknowledged they have “more to do” but insisted steps had been taken to address some of the problems.

Candy Morris, chief executive of the Kent and Medway Strategic Health Authority, said there had been dramatic improvements in waiting time for certain appointments and that hundreds more staff had been recruited.

However, the scale of the budget crisis had only become apparent in the last 18 months.

“At the same time, we have had to deal with some significant problems. Much has been done but there is still a lot to do. The NHS always has to strike a balance between good financial control and service development,” she said.