Today The News can reveal:
Medics are being urged to prescribe the cheapest drugs available instead of branded medication – which have the same clinical effect – to save cash
More people are being treated in the community – either at local hospitals, GP surgeries, clinics or at home – to avoid hefty hospital charges.
Doctors are being offered extra cash to review referrals and check whether patients could have been treated outside hospital
A failure to break even means the trust will be ranked poor for its use of resources in the annual health check by watchdog the Healthcare Commission.
An emergency 'turnaround' plan launched to save £17m by the end of March has so helped recover all but £5m.
But now health officials are under added pressure to find the remaining cash before the financial year ends.
They put the debt – equal to 3.3 per cent of the trust's £1.575bn budget – down to a massive hike in GP referrals and a £3.1m overspend on medication due to the introduction of new drugs on the NHS by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.
The government-set 18-week referral-to-treatment target has also had an impact as more patients are turning their back on private care in favour of the NHS due to shorter waits.
Medics are now being urged to prescribe more generic drugs.
These include anti-depressant Prozac which costs £14 for a month's supply compared to less than £2 for its generic counterpart Fluoxetine, and alendronate – used to treat bone disease osteoporosis and costs less than £2 per month compared to branded version Fosamax which costs more than £20.
External consultant Tom Hampshire has been employed to work for the trust two days a week as a 'turnaround director'. And the trust has stumped up £530,000 to encourage GPs to review referrals.
Cash has been offered to 147 surgeries to fund 12 weekly two-hour sessions to address whether referrals already made could have been dealt with outside hospital.
It is also hoped that an awareness campaign launched last year will help reduce the £9m annual bill for wasted drugs – cash that could have funded 1,800 extra hip replacements, 1,260 heart bypasses or 270 community nurses.
Neil Hardy, head of medicines management for the trust, said: 'The trust medicines management team is working with surgeries to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of prescribing. One area is to encourage the use of prescribing medicines by their generic name rather than the brand name.
'For medicines that are no longer protected by patent the difference in cost to the NHS between the generic product and the branded product can be significant.
'Simvastatin – a medicine used to prevent and treat heart disease – is available as a generic medicine and costs less than £2 for a month's supply: the branded equivalent Zocor costs £29 per month.
'There are a small number of medicines for which it is important that the patient remains on the same brand and we're working with surgeries to make sure that for those patients the prescription includes the name of the brand.'
Dr Nigel Watson, chief executive of the Wessex Local Medical Committee, said: 'Certain drugs, if prescribed generically, will cost a matter of pence a month. But if you prescribe the branded version it would cost about £20.
'When new drugs are introduced they are given a 10-year licence or patent. But when it comes off that patent suddenly a lot more people start to produce the drug and it crashes down in price.
'A handful of people will have a problem with certain generic drugs, but it's not anything to do with the tablet – it's either the colouring or coating.
Both generic and branded drugs are made to the same quality and the same clinical effectiveness.'
Hilary Tyler, pictured below, the trust's director of finance said: 'If we took no action we would be £24.3m in the red at the end of the financial year. The branded drugs might have fancier packaging but they are exactly the same and they just cost more.
'For everybody to get the drugs they need we need to buy cheaper medication.'
'We're also trying to make sure more people are being treated in the most appropriate place. That may be in an acute hospital, a community hospital at their GP surgery or at home.
'And we are looking at GP referrals to see if patients could be more appropriately dealt with outside hospital. For example a patient with rheumatism could reasonably by cared for by another GP, whose services we have already paid for, rather than by attending an outpatient appointment at a hospital which can cost up to £150 extra. The 18-week referral to treatment target has had an effect. When I joined the NHS two years ago the waiting time from being referred to getting treated was about two years in some cases.
'Now it's about 12 to 15 weeks, so more people who previously went private are coming back to the National Health Service because they know they don't have to wait as long.
'It is not easy but we are doing our best to recover the money this year and are trying to make sure it doesn't affect patients.'

The News says