Consultants push back against potential three-way merger

The board of Queen Victoria Hospital Foundation Trust — which specialises in reconstructive surgery, burns care and rehabilitation — is exploring a potential merger with Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust and Western Sussex Hospitals FT.

However, the merger — which could go ahead as early as next October — would have to be backed by more than half of QVH’s 26 governors. HSJ understands a number of past and present consultants with concerns about the merger will stand for council of governors’ seats in elections due to be held in December and January. 

Fourteen out of the 20 public governor seats are up for election, along with its three staff governor seats.

Letters on behalf of the trust’s consultants committee are also being sent to the area’s MPs, raising concerns about the future of specialist services and, in particular, the trust’s role in providing these for patients from a wider area, especially Kent and Surrey. Some consultants are worried these may move away from QVH’s East Grinstead site.

QVH is considering the merger partly because of its financial difficulties and has previously warned it will be in deficit for several years. However, some of the consultants argue it is not clear why the trust is struggling financially, suggesting potential coding issues could have reduced its income. The added costs to clinical commissioning groups could increase if the highly specialist work the trust carries out is moved elsewhere, potentially London.

Retired consultant Andrew Brown said: “The independence of the hospital has always been a good thing and a lot of the goodwill in the hospital comes from feeling they are running their own ship. With the best will in the world, after a merger the management mindset is likely to gravitate southwards from the hospital.”

A petition to the merger, which is being run on 38 degrees, has also received more than 8,000 signatures. 

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust and Western Sussex Hospitals FT have already announced their plans to merge, with QVH considering the option of joining them. Over the next few months, QVH will develop a strategic case, looking at whether the merger would protect its specialist services. This is likely to be considered by the board in April 2021.

Although the trust is in West Sussex, more than 60 per cent of patients are from Kent and a small proportion are from Surrey. Others come from as far away as Northern Ireland for its highly specialist services.

The three-way merger would create a megatrust with a turnover of over £1.2bn, although QVH — and its turnover of just over £70m — would only be a small part of that. 

In a statement, QVH said it would only merge with the other hospitals if it helped the trust meet various conditions, including continuing to provide services for “the wide area we cover currently”. It added it had an “ongoing programme of engagement with all [its] staff, including addressing concerns”.

Joint BSUH and Western Sussex chief executive Dame Marianne Griffiths told HSJ: “QVH is not part of the current merger planning but if it does decide to join the new organisation its priorities and ambitions will be shaped in exactly the same way — by the expertise of clinicians and their understanding of the needs of the communities they serve.”