Health partnership scrapped as hospitals trusts split

CHANGE: Hull Royal Infirmary

By Rick Lyon, Co-Editor

The health partnership that oversees the region’s hospitals trust is to be disbanded, it has been announced.

Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (HUTH) – which manages Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital – and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLaG) currently make up the Humber Health Partnership (HHP).

However, following an organisational review prompted by NHS England due to serious failures at both trusts which saw them fall down the national performance league table, HHP will now be dissolved. HUTH and NLaG will instead operate as two separate trusts.

The boards of both trusts agreed with the recommended structural change made after the review, which found that separate arrangements would enable them to focus better on local needs.

Alan Downey, chair of HHP, said: “The purpose of this review has never been to pursue organisational change for its own sake.

“It has been to look honestly at the evidence and identify the arrangements most likely to support patients, colleagues and sustainable services over the longer term.

“The review’s outcome shows that the challenges reflected in our performance and in the external scrutiny of both trusts are symptoms of deeper underlying issues – including the way the group was originally conceived and established in the first half of the decade, the historic challenges facing both trusts before its formation, and long-standing pressures across the wider health and care system.

“It has found that these challenges are structural, not simply operational, and that HUTH and NLaG should operate as two separate trusts rather than through the current group structure, while continuing to work together where that benefits patients and services. That is why the boards have accepted its recommendation.

LOCAL NEEDS: Castle Hill Hospital

“There is now important work to do to develop the detailed arrangements and ensure that any transition is carefully planned.”

The decision comes after both HUTH and NLaG were named in March among the first five trusts in England to be placed in the NHS Intensive Recovery programme because of concerns over their performance.

Lyn Simpson, group chief executive of HHP, said: “Since last autumn, colleagues across HUTH and NLaG have helped build a much clearer and more honest understanding of the long-standing challenges we need to address.

“That work led to our clinically-led improvement plan and enabled us to look openly at whether the current organisational structure gives both trusts the best basis for sustained improvement.

“The boards’ decision recognises that our two trusts serve distinct populations and local systems.

“But it is not a retreat from collaboration and it is not a return to the past. We must retain and strengthen the clinical networks, specialist support, shared learning and patient pathways that benefit from working across a wider geography.

“Change will not happen overnight. We will now work through the detail carefully, with colleagues and partners, and the transition will be properly planned and timetabled.

“Today’s decision does not change patient care or how patients access services. Patients should continue to access care in the same way, at the same hospitals and through the same routes as they do now.”