The merger of two hospital trusts – which would have formed the second largest in the country – has been cancelled with budget deficits and emergency waiting time pressures being blamed.
NUH (Nottingham University Hospitals) NHS Trust, which runs the Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital in the East Midlands city, was due to merge with SFH (Sherwood Forest Hospitals) NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the King’s Mill hospital in Sutton in Ashfield.
Earlier this year the merger was delayed until 2017, with hospital managers suggesting they would have to focus on winter pressures – and now the NUH chief executive Peter Homa has said the trust must concentrate on turning around financial and clinical performance.
Last month, reports had suggested that difficulties involved in the merger – including SFH’s crippling PFI debt for the building of King’s Mill hospital – could be too much to overcome but the key figures involved in the merger promised it was still going ahead.
Full story in BMA News, 3 November 2017