IT'S a reflex to regard Worcestershire Hospitals Trust's single star health rating as a sign of a crisis that continues to deepen.

To a degree, whether your view of the state of affairs is coloured by a deep knowledge of the past decade of woe, or by queueing for cancer treatment, trust chief executive John Rostill and his team deserve a degree of sympathy.

First, we must trust him when he tells us that matters have already improved since the crucial statistics that prompted this apparently worrying judgement were handed over.

By the same token, if the same shifting of goalposts that affected this year's figures is repeated next year, it will take a gargantuan performance to change that lone-star status.

Until then, with a debt for the past two years standing at £25m, the trust has "significantly" underachieved its financial management targets.

Set against the multi-million pound cost of running the county's health service, that's less dramatic than it sounds, but the trend is still worrying.

Let's not forget that the roots of this crisis were laid by the bureaucrats who - in the mid-90s - allowed a £9.4m debt to mount, and then cobbled the Investing in Excellence blueprint together to retrieve it.

The rest we know.

Until Mr Rostill arrived, last autumn, we were expected to join the conspiracy of denial.

But he was honest about the situation, and gave himself until the end of the next financial year - now just eight months away - to fix it.

If he succeeds we'll all be a winner. But his task appears to be growing tougher.