UH Bristol and WAHT plan to merge as one organisation in April 2020. The two trusts have a shared ambition to ensure Weston General Hospital remains at the heart of the community, providing services that meet the needs of its local people. We are stronger together and merging will bring many benefits. It's an exciting and unique opportunity to create a new organisation with a greater purpose, which is seen as a beacon for outstanding education, research and innovation.
You read it right - once we merge our combined workforce will be over 13,000! This increases our diversity, capacity and resilience. It will allow for greater development opportunities for our staff across a much wider portfolio of services, strengthening the knowledge base, peer support and skills and experience of all our staff, as well as helping us deliver exceptional local services for local people and specialist services across the South West and beyond.
By taking everything that's good about Weston and everything that's good about UH Bristol we can create something that's even better and with a greater purpose. The merger is not about simply bolting one organisation onto the other. To that end, when we merge, the name of the new organisation will be University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust - a real signal that this is the start of something new. All our hospitals, including Weston General Hospital and Bristol Royal Infirmary, will keep their names.
The merger will mean a better experience for our patients by improving access to local services. We'll ensure people from North Somerset and surrounding areas will be able to be seen and treated in their local hospital, and improve access to specialist services in both Bristol and Weston through better use of an expanded workforce, estates and facilities.
The merger creates an opportunity to add to our strong academic partners and develop stronger links with Weston College as a leading provider of education in health for the region and beyond. Weston General Hospital can be right at the heart of this and become a rich training ground and pipeline for new healthcare roles, and building a reputation for providing great training and education.
The merger will enable us to accelerate the roll out of digital technology to enhance and improve the quality and delivery of services across the new organisation, further cementing our Digital Exemplar status. This will not only support our staff to do their jobs more efficiently, but bring real benefits to our patients, who won't have to experience the frustration of repeating the same information while being treated in our hospitals.
The merger brings the opportunity to share expertise and best practice - particularly in the delivery of exemplar models of frailty, ambulatory and out-of-hospital care. Through our combined specialties, we'll have opportunity to develop and learn from each other to create truly joined up care which enables people to stay in their own home, or return home as soon as they no longer need our care.
Once we merge, we'll expand our Quality Improvement Faculty and Quality Improvement Academy to create an organisation where innovative thinking can truly flourish. Harnessing bright ideas and supporting and developing our staff to make these a reality - enabling positive change. We'll nurture innovation, and research and empower our teams to design services and pathways at the forefront of care particularly in medical and surgical ambulatory care.
If you have a question or any feedback about our upcoming merger, you can send this to ubh-tr.uhbristolwestonpartnership@nhs.net