Efforts to save £530 million across Lancashire and South Cumbria's health economy are being treated as a 'full-scale emergency' akin to the Covid-19 pandemic, a health boss has said.

The Lancashire Telegraph reported in September how the integrated care board (ICB) for the neighbouring areas would work to achieve a £175m deficit.

The ICB would shoulder £270m and NHS hospital trust providers, such as East Lancashire's, would generate £260.8m in savings.

Kevin Lavery, the ICB chief executive, says the board has adopted an 'incident management approach' to the financial effort.

He says in a report to tomorrow's board: "This is essentially treating the financial challenge as a full-scale emergency requiring a daily and weekly grip on savings programmes and expenditure control.

"This aims to allow for quick decisions to be made and keeps us sharply focused on delivering a savings plan for the ICB and actions which support savings plans across the trusts.

"We took a similar kind of approach during the Covid-19 pandemic and although this is a different type of crisis, it is a crisis just the same and requires concerted efforts of everyone in the ICB to get behind the work required and ensure we are all pushing in the same direction."

Six 'delivery units', covering acute commissioning and contracts, primary and community care, prescribing, mental health, continuing care, and reserves and control, meet weekly to keep abreast of the savings challenge.

Mr Lavery has reported to the board that while there is a 'significant risk' of missing the target, progress had been made in that savings in their plan's 'high-risk' category had dropped by 28 per cent.

Board members were told last month that September and October were critical months in ensuring overall proposals came to fruition.

Sam Proffitt, the ICB's chief finance officer and deputy chief executive, told board members tackling escalation costs generated by the urgent and emergency care pathway, representing around £80m, would be a key factor in achieving the savings target.

This included issues around 'corridor care', escalation beds and delayed discharges, the meeting heard.

Earlier this year the Lancashire Telegraph reported how the ICB was working towards 'zero' corridor care days across Lancashire and South Cumbria.

It was also reported an average of 68 patients were left waiting for admission on hospital corridors at the Royal Blackburn Hospital - and probes were ongoing into two deaths said to be the result of 'poor care'.