Hospital managers have called in a team of specialist financial experts to help them save up to £50 million over two years.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust will be working with PriceWaterhouseCoopers over the coming weeks as it prepares to face a widely expected drop in funding next year.

This comes despite hospitals continuing to deal with more patients than ever before and a potential outbreak of swine flu.

In a message to staff, trust chief executive Duncan Selbie insisted the review was not about job losses or cuts in services.

He said: “Providing the highest quality care within the means available has never been easy and it is about to get tougher.

“We have started an intensive piece of work with PriceWaterhouseCoopers to search for ideas and opportunities that balance the need to find savings without compromising quality and safety.

“There are ways in which this can be done and we are looking to learn from the best within and outside of the trust.

“To be clear this is not a prelude to a redundancy programme or the like. Far from it.

“It is about planning ahead and behaving and acting in a financially responsible way given the wider economic circumstances facing the UK.”

The trust, which runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, expects to pay around £500,000 to the company.

It has an annual budget of just over £400 million.