Exclusive: Trust to take over private hospital

East Sussex Healthcare Trust is using some of its capital funds to buy the fixtures and fittings of the Spire Sussex Hospital, which is physically linked to the trust’s Conquest Hospital in Hastings. It will use it to provide private patient facilities at the site.

The building, which has 22 beds and two operating theatres, had been leased to Spire and has operated as a private hospital since 1997.

The trust said it would not disclose how much it paid because the deal was “commercially confidential”.

Last week, Royal United Hospital Bath Foundation Trust announced it was taking over a Circle-owned local hospital. However, RUH said it will predominately do NHS work at the site, developing it as a “cold site” and diagnostic centre.

ESHT already has an income of around £3m a year from private patients. However, its current private patient unit — the Michelham unit at the Eastbourne District General Hospital — made losses of £91,000 in 2019-20 and £412,000 in 2018-19, according to its most recent annual report.

The trust initially plans to mirror the services, often provided by its own consultants, offered thus far by Spire. But the unit will continue to undertake some NHS work as it currently does. A Care Quality Commission report in 2017, which rated it as “outstanding”, found slightly more than half of inpatients were NHS-funded as well as a third of outpatients.

The 129 employees at the Spire will be offered the chance to TUPE to East Sussex Healthcare Trust when the transfer is completed at the end of the financial year. Bank workers will also be invited to apply for work through the ESHT bank.

The trust recently told East Sussex Health and Wellbeing Board the backlog maintenance across its sites was ”in excess of £300m” and was one of the highest in the country. It is one of the trusts in the government’s Health Infrastructure Plan and is developing a business case for the refurbishment and rebuild of its sites. 

East Sussex Healthcare Trust said in a statement: “We have a strong, established relationship with Spire and have worked effectively in partnership throughout the pandemic to treat both acutely ill covid patients and urgent, non-covid patients.

“This agreement is an extension of this partnership and will allow us to offer choice and use capacity more flexibly in the best interests of our patients.”

ESHT chief executive Joe Chadwick-Bell told a board meeting the transfer “would enhance the trust’s ability to recruit and retain consultants and would give more choice for patients”.

Spire Healthcare — which recently agreed to a takeover bid from Ramsay Healthcare — declined to comment on the move.