Musgrove and Yeovil merger official
If you read The Leveller, this will not be a big surprise, it was our 15 October headline. But yesterday (Tuesday 8 November) the board of directors at Somerset NHS Foundation Trust and Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust met . They approved the business case to support the merger between the two NHS trusts. The result was not a massive surprise either. Since January of this year, the majority of members of the board of each trust have been the same people! They were hardly likely to disagree with themselves.
The merger should in general terms, streamline the NHS in Somerset. Removing artificial barriers to providing a single service and reducing waste and cost. Though we won’t know how effective it has been until the new merged body produces a first year of accounts.
The new NHS trust will provide acute care and treatment from Yeovil and Musgrove Park Hospitals. It will also run community-based services, including the county’s 13 community hospitals. These include the hospitals at Bridgwater, Chard, Minehead and South Petherton. Finally it will run the mental health and learning disability services for the Somerset County Council area.
In addition, it will run 16 GP practices through the Symphony Healthcare Services subsidiary.
The business case describes a series of plans that set out the benefits of the merger for patients and what it will mean in practice. Following this approval, it will be reviewed by the regulatory body, NHS England.
If the business case is given the go-ahead by NHS England, then it’s intended that the two trusts will merge, subject to feedback, on 1 April 2023.
Has anyone thought about how the people of Taunton and Yeovil are supposed to access care divided between the two hospitals with no reliable bus service?
Nah! They dont use buses, anymore than our district council members do!!