Community healthcare providers have been told to stop stalling and get on with \u201calready decided\u201d plans to merge.<\/p>\n
Medway councillors told representatives from Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT)and neighbouring social enterprise, Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) they believed a merger had effectively already been green-lit.<\/p>\n
Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust and Medway Community Healthcare were due to propose the merits of merging at a meeting, but councillors said the decision had already been made. Photo: iStock<\/p>\n
Both face significant health inequalities in their areas and believe coming together will be provide \u201ca range of benefits\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mairead McCormick, CEO of KCHFT, and MCH managing director Martin Riley presented a report to Medway councillors last Thursday (March 12) outlining the rationale for a possible takeover of MCH by the trust, but suggested more work was to be done.<\/p>\n
However, Cllr Dan McDonald (Lab), health and adult social care commit tee chair, asked what the point of a discussion would be when he argued the process was effectively over.<\/p>\n
He suggested the chairs of KCHFT and MCH should come to the committee and present the plan.<\/p>\n
Cllr McDonalds said: \u201cI don\u2019t want to hear \u2018we\u2019re in stage two and we\u2019re going to stage three\u2019 or \u2018we\u2019re looking at another model or another cycle\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re at your decision, you know the trust is going to take over MCH, so what\u2019s the point of this discussion?<\/p>\n
Cllr Dan McDonald (Lab) asked what was the point in discussing the possible consequences of a merger when the decision had already been made<\/p>\n
\u201cCome to us with the details of how it\u2019s all going to work, what\u2019s going to happen to your buildings, to your staff, and everything else.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to have constant discussions about what you might do, when you\u2019ve already decided.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to merge, do it, because our residents are going to be in the middle of it and need certainty of what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want your board members here to answer questions about what you\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The committee agreed to defer the report after minimal discussion until the next meeting where the boards of MCH and KCHFT would be expected to present the plan of how the merger would work.<\/p>\n
Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) is a community interest company<\/p>\n
The process of merging the trust and MCH first began in July last year, with work done to understand what the possible benefits might be.<\/p>\n
In November, NHS England gave the go-ahead for the creation of a business case for the merger.<\/p>\n
MCH was set up as a community interest company (CIC), a type of business designed to undertake activities for the benefit of the community and not purely for a profit, in 2011.<\/p>\n
The reports outlined how a merger would mean greater collaboration between the workforces in facing increasing complexity of cases, retention challenges, health inequalities, and financial problems.<\/p>\n
Ms McCormick, from KCHFT, said: \u201cIt became apparent very quickly when we looked our data and the services we were providing people were getting different offers, inconsistencies, unwarranted variation, sometimes poorer outcomes.<\/p>\n
Adam Doyle, NHS Kent and Medway ICB CEO, Mairead McCormick, CEO of Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, and Martin Riley, managing director of Medway Community Healthcare<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about taking something away from Medway, it\u2019s about putting more into Medway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Riley added limited funding and the required efficiency savings were becoming more of a problem for MCH.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cLooking at the future of running a community interest company, there\u2019s a financial deficit across the system – it\u2019s getting harder and harder to find those efficiency savings.<\/p>\n
\u201cMCH has one of the lowest overheads, even though we\u2019re a small organisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we can only go so far on reducing the paperclips, the issue is how do we look for further savings and being a sustainable organisation while not compromising patient care.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy coming together we think there\u2019s a range of benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
To go ahead with the merger the decision will need approval of both boards, NHS England, as well as agreement from KCHFT’s governors and MCH’s shareholders through a formal vote.<\/p>\n
The item was deferred to the next health and social care committee, which will take place in June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Community healthcare providers have been told to stop stalling and get on with \u201calready decided\u201d plans to merge.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,191,188,120624,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-480075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-kent","tag-medway","tag-medway-council","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}