Cumbria NHS trusts to merge

One of the reports presented at last week's meeting of Cumbria Health Scrutiny Committee was a progress review on the merger of the two main trusts providing NHS care in North, West and East Cumbria.

The former organisations which are merging are

1) The North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust (NCUH),

which provides secondary care in the northern two-thirds of the county running West Cumberland Hospital (WCH) and the Cumberland Infirmary at Carlisle (CIC), and

2) The Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation NHS Trust (CPFT)

which is much less easily describe din a sentence but provides more than 60 community and mental health services over an area which currently covers the whole of Cumbria.

I personally think the advantages of the package which this merger comes with outweigh the disadvantages  -it makes for a simpler, less "balkanised" structure in which the resources of the NHS in the Northern two-thirds of the county can more effectively be concentrated on the issues which most need attention - but there are important questions to be asked and some of them were asked on Tuesday.

The most obvious issue is that the existing trusts do not cover identical areas and there is work to be done to make sure that the new arrangements are as satisfactory in the Barrow and South Lakes area of the county as they are in the North.

There are some concerns in this area and they were raised and discussed at the meeting.

This is taking place in the context that more partnership working with neighbouring trusts to provide Mental health services will be taking place and the North and South of Cumbria will be looking in different directions. This will need to be subject to careful scrutiny when more detailed proposals come forward,

The  report "This is us" which went to the committee can be found here.

The question of a name for the merged organisation has yet to be settled: if you have any constructive suggestions I gather the Trusts would be delighted to hear them!