Medway delays merger plan following mortality probe

Medway and Dartford and Gravesham Trust have previously announced proposals for a merger and a business case was submitted to the Department of Health and Monitor in November.

It is not known what stage consideration by the DH and Monitor had reached.

However, Medway was one of 14 trusts named on Monday as being subject to a review because it has had a higher than expected death rate for several years (news, 14 February, page 10).

The Medway trust said in a statement: “The trust recognises that it needs time and space to fully focus on the [NHS Commissioning Board] review on hospital standardised mortality ratios and ensure that integration is based on solid foundations.

“The trust has already made progress against its own plan to drive down HSMR and the trust board welcomes the NCB review. At present, it is understood that this national process is likely to take three to four months.

“When the NCB review timeline is clearer, the trusts will be better able to estimate a timescale for resuming the Monitor process.

“Medway Foundation Trust board has agreed to consider requesting reinstatement of the formal integration process no earlier than June 2013.”

A spokesman for the trust said its “mortality rates have been steadily decreasing despite it seeing significantly more patients” over the past 10 years, but accepted its “HSMR remains higher than the national standard”.

Medway and Dartford and Gravesham’s business case, Better Care Together, came a year after the trusts indicated they could merge. It stated that both Medway Maritime Hospital and Dartford’s Darent Valley Hospital would continue to offer the “core” services of a consultant-led accident and emergency department, and outpatient, children’s and maternity services.

Meanwhile, it said “enhanced specialist services” would be developed across the new trust so that fewer patients from the area were referred to London.

It emphasised the organisations’ view that a merger would provide long-term sustainability which “cannot be achieved by each trust alone”.

The trust was provisionally referred to as North Kent Hospitals Foundation Trust.