SOME health services in East Lancashire will have to be sacrificed next year to pay off a £3million debt blamed on the cost of prescribed drugs, bosses have admitted.

East Lancashire Health Authority, which will be disbanded in April, is facing a forecast overspend of £3.6 million.

Bosses have agreed to carry the debt into next year, but know the money has to be paid back in the next financial year - which will mean some services will have to be.

They do not know what those will be yet, but they will not be anything needed to keep to government targets on waiting times.

The responsibility will fall to the new strategic health authority, which replaces the health authority from April this year.

Director of finance, Chris Dixon, said: "This will have an impact on developments next year. What is coming through now is the scale of the problem."

Mr Dixon said the system would feel the benefits of the prescribing in the coming years with a cut in the number of cases of conditions such as coronary heart disease, saving the NHS money on treating them.

But, he said, the knock-on effect of paying for the more efficient drugs was the cost.

Mr Dixon said the national problem was partly due to the drugs doctors were having to prescribe to fit in with the Government's National Plan.

"There was no detailed costing of the plan done," he said. "I believe that those resources are not being matched to the targets we are being asked to provide. It is like being sent to Tesco with £10 and being given a shopping list that costs £15. "There will be certain 'must dos' but others, we will not be able to while we try to maintain financial balance in the next financial year."

The issue is part of a national problem which most health organisations are facing.

Some of the more expensive drugs being prescribed, which the Government hopes will reduce the numbers of people dying from conditions like cancers, leukaemia and heart problems include glivac, used for treating leukaemia, taxanes, for treating cancers, reopro, for patients who have had heart surgery, and statins, to prevent heart attacks.

Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust chose to carry a six figure debt into next year in an attempt to highlight the problem, rather than take a loan to pay it off this year.

The trust, which is in its second year, is looking at a debt of £900,000, which will also have to be paid off by the end of the next financial year, which ends in April 2003.

Paul Hinnigan, director of finance, told the PCT: "I did some investigating, and it appears that 14 out of 16 health authorities in the north west are facing the same sort of problems.

"Clearly, the local problem at the PCT is simply due to prescribing. We had thought it was one figure, but now we have found it will be more." Members were told that the rising costs of drugs which GPs were advised to prescribe through the new government guidelines had increased their forecast deficit by just over £100,000.

The Department of Health is aware that the guidelines for doctors to prescribe drugs means the cost is rising.

Figures show over the last five years, the average growth in the drugs bill has been eight per cent nationally, and is forecast to be ten per cent for 2001/2.

In a statement the department said: "The overall effect of the National Service Frameworks and NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) guidance appears to be reflecting in an additional one to two per cent growth over the eight per cent general trend of recent years for prescribing in primary care."