31 January 2018
Two NHS Trusts to work towards possible merger
Today, 31 January 2018, the Trust Board
of University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UH Bristol),
with the support of its Council of Governors, has confirmed its
intention to pursue an organisational merger with Weston Area
Health NHS Trust (WAHT). This has been welcomed by the WAHT Board
who also met today to review the proposal.
The potential merger builds on the
formal partnership between the two trusts that has been in place
since May 2017, enabling greater joint working between the
organisations and more seamless care to patients.
It also supports the work of 'Healthy
Weston: joining up services for better care in the Weston area' led
by North Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group. A key aim of
Healthy Weston is to create a sustainable hospital at Weston
General Hospital that remains at the heart of the community and
provides the services it is best placed to do in order to meet the
needs of local people.
Robert Woolley, Chief Executive of UH
Bristol, said: "Today, the Trust Board agreed that we would build
on our existing partnership and together with WAHT undertake
further work to pursue a possible merger. Our shared goal remains
to ensure hospital-based services in Bristol and North Somerset
provide high quality care to patients and families which are
clinically and financially sustainable and we believe that a merger
with Weston Area Health NHS Trust could help achieve this
goal."
James Rimmer, Chief Executive of WAHT,
said: "We are making good progress through our formal partnership
with UH Bristol - for example we share some joint staff, many of
our clinical services are closely linked and we are integrating
some of our services. We believe we could make more rapid progress
and improve our long-term sustainability by formally merging with
UH Bristol. We look forward to exploring this further with UH
Bristol, in the context of the 'Healthy Weston' programme, over the
coming months."
The next phase of this work will see
both trusts working through a comprehensive appraisal process. The
purpose of this appraisal process is to assess the clinical and
financial benefits of a merger within the context of the 'Healthy
Weston' programme. Depending on the outcome of the appraisal
process, UH Bristol would complete a full business case for
consideration by the boards of both trusts and the Council of
Governors at UH Bristol with a view to completing the merger in the
spring of 2019 at the earliest. Any final decision would also
require the approval of the Competition and Markets Authority and
NHS regulators.
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