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Two Bristol NHS trusts have agreed to formally merge, creating an organisation with an annual turnover of almost £1bn and an ambition to fulfil the city’s potential as major academic research and teaching centre.
The combination of University Hospitals Bristol Foundation Trust (UHBFT) and North Bristol Trust (NBT) was approved by the board of UHBFT yesterday. The NBT board gave its backing for the move last Thursday.
The two organisations say integration can achieve benefits for patients, staff and the wider Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire areas, including:
- Improvements in healthcare by simplifying the way patients are treated when using the services of both organisations;
- Ease of implementing service changes between organisations;
- Helping Bristol fulfil its academic potential as a major research and teaching centre of excellence;
- Identifying areas of duplication in the combined workforce that could provide opportunities to reduce waste and improve efficiency savings.
NBT, which has a £450m-turnover, recently described its financial position as “extremely serious”. The trust is due to move into a new £430m private finance initiative (PFI) hospital in 2014.
Both trusts will now produce business cases which must be approved by their boards. A programme of service reconfiguration is already in place which aims to reduce duplication of services across the city.
The move comes despite a University of Bristol study earlier this year which found mergers are unlikely to be the most effective way of dealing with poorly performing NHS hospitals.
It found the wave of hospital consolidation in the late 1990s and early 2000s – when around half the acute hospitals in England were involved in a merger – brought few benefits.
Poor financial performance typically continued, with merged hospitals recording larger deficits post-merger than pre-merger, it claimed.
