'Bleak' 2011 puts healthcare sector on knife edge

With the health sector accounting for 8% of UK GDP, the firm cautioned that the increase in insolvency in 2011 should be no surprise and the market should brace itself for more. While the failure of Southern Cross was one of the market's biggest stories in 2011, it noted that NHS budget cuts were also starting to bite and would be increasingly be felt this year. Deloitte found that firms providing care to the elderly were likely to be hardest hit as their margins were being increasingly squeezed from higher costs and lower local authority funding. Its figures revealed that firms in...