Management consultants' bills to turn around struggling Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals will exceed £1m.
More than £800,000 has already been paid to troubleshooters tasked with increasing performance and efficiency at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal.
The hefty bills come after hospital watchdog Monitor demanded Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust launched a “turnaround” project to reverse its financial woes.
Last year the trust dipped into the red for the first time in over a decade, recording a £4m deficit for 2013/14.
Consultants, including from Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) and PA Consulting, were brought in after hospital bosses struggled to make the £19m cuts required by the NHS.
With a further £20m of cuts demanded this year, the regulator said it feared the trust could run out of cash unless rapid action was taken.
A record of payments so far show PWC has invoiced for £666,856 while PA Consulting’s bills total £123,075.
The period, from December to May, also shows clinical productivity experts from Four Eyes Insight Ltd were employed at a cost of £50,434.
The trust has said it expects a final bill of about £1.3m.
Monitor has said the trust’s money problems are because it has to pay for “two hospitals’ worth of services”.
Refreshed plans on hospital restructuring are expected by the end of 2015.
Meanwhile it has emerged tens of thousands were spent on a Huddersfield hospital site just months before it is due to close.
Almost £33,000 was forked out repairing windows at the Princess Royal site at Greenhead Road last April.
Hospital bosses at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust announced the closure of the site in 2013, saying it would cost £10m to refurbish.
They are currently re-homing many of the services and have a target of mothballing the site by the end of this year.
A hospital spokeswoman said despite the closure, management still had a duty to undertake essential maintenance to keep the building decent for staff and patients still working there.
Invoices show the money was used to refurbish windows, gutters, soffits and handrails, including repainting.
A further £26,000 was spent on asbestos removal last October.
The Princess Royal community health centre is the former maternity hospital where thousands of babies were born.
It opened in July, 1928, as the Municipal Maternity Home.
The last baby was born there in 1984 and the building was then handed over to community health services.
Health services offered from the health centre include a sexual health clinic, termination of pregnancy, hearing clinic, children’s therapies and podiatry, which has the biggest number of patients at 12,258.
