LONDON, June 7 (UPI) -- Britain's National Health Service has overspent its budget by more than $950 million, NHS Secretary Patricia Hewitt said Wednesday.
The announcement of the deficit, more than twice that of last year, to the House of Commons comes on the heels of months of discord within the organization, which saw the loss of 15,000 jobs earlier this year, the London Times reporteds.
Part of the cause of the shortfall is salary miscalculations and the fact that family doctors managed to achieve larger pay increases than expected under a newly instituted pay-for-performance system.
Hewitt defended the overspending, saying it amounted to less than one percent of the overall budget, and that the agency would be back on budget next year without sacrificing healthcare quality.
But critics, including one of the system's senior doctors, have accused NHS of squandering funds on private treatment facilities and management consultants, the newspaper said.
