NHS finances: Your questions answered

To find out how to use the NHS finance tables, how they were put together and the answers to other questions, use the links below, or scroll down the page.

What do the tables show?

Where have the figures come from?

How should the rankings be read?

What does a trust's place in the rankings mean?

Why do the figures only apply to England?

Why is my hospital not in the tables?

WHAT DO THE TABLES SHOW?

These tables show the financial health of each primary care trust, acute hospital, specialist health trust (such as a dedicated cancer or heart hospital), ambulance trust, mental health trust and strategic health authority for England.

The tables show whether the trust was in surplus or deficit at the end of the 2005/06 financial year.

Deficits are indicated with a minus sign.

The tables also show that figure as a percentage of the trust's total turnover.

This figure has then been used to rank trusts to show those with the largest surplus down to those with the largest deficit.

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WHERE HAVE THE FIGURES COME FROM?

The figures were supplied by individual trusts and collated by the Department of Health.

BBC News then calculated the surplus or deficit as a percentage of the turnover in order to put the figure into context - so a large trust might have a large basic deficit figure, but it might be a small percentage of its turnover.

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WHAT DO THE RANKINGS MEAN?

The trusts are not ranked by size of deficit or surplus, because of the differences between them, such as size and location.

Instead they are ranked by how high the surplus or deficit is as a percentage of their turnover.

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WHAT DOES A TRUST'S PLACE IN THE RANKINGS MEAN?

The trust ranked number one has the highest surplus as a percentage of turnover, while the trust ranked lowest has the highest deficit using the same criteria.

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WHY DO THE FIGURES ONLY APPLY TO ENGLAND?

The data has been produced by the Department of Health, which only has responsibility for the NHS in England.

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WHY IS MY HOSPITAL NOT IN THE TABLES?

It may be a foundation hospital.

The 32 foundation trusts are part of the NHS, but run their own finances and report to an independent regulator, Monitor.

That information has been published in a different format to that put out by the Department of Health, so has been presented separately.

Click here to check if your hospital is on this list.

Foundation trust finances

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