Barts Health NHS Trust

Barts Health NHS Trust
Geography
Location	London, United Kingdom
Organisation
Care system	NHS
Hospital type	NHS trust
History
Founded	2012
Links
Website	bartshealth.nhs.uk

Barts Health NHS Trust is an NHS Trust operating in the City of London and East London. It is part of UCL Partners.

It is the largest NHS Trust in the UK.

History

Barts Health was formed on 1 April 2012 by the merger of Barts and The London NHS Trust, Newham University Hospital NHS Trust and Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust.

The Trust has the largest Private Finance Initiative contract in the UK, a £1bn scheme. Innisfree Ltd, Skanska, Carillion, Synergy Health, Siemens Medical Solutions and Varian Medical Systems are the partners. Paying back that PFI is costing the Trust £115m a year.

It is one of the biggest provider of specialised services in England, which generated an income of £316.1 million in 2014/5.

Performance

In January 2014 a Care Quality Commission inspection found that morale in the Trust was low and that "Too many members of staff of all levels and across all sites came to us to express their concerns about being bullied, and many only agreed to speak to us in confidence."

In September 2014 the local City and Hackney Clinical Commissioning Group complained that they had "significant evidence of failing administrative and support systems, which is reflected strongly and consistently in feedback received from local GPs”. There were concerns about waiting times performance, and levels of clinical harm.

The Trust spent £935,500 on a “turnaround” management consultant, Donald Muir, a director of Titanium Global Solutions who worked at the Trust from October 2013 to July 2014. The Trust spent more than £7m on five consultancy firms in the 14 months to December 2014:

• Burnett Re-Engineering, £312,056;
• Cairdeas Consulting, £202,030;
• JAT HR, £252,875;
• PwC, £4,857,833;
• Titanium Global Solutions, £1,376,937

The chief executive, Peter Morris, and chief nurse, Kay Riley, resigned their positions in February 2015, shortly after it was revealed that the Trust reported a £93m deficit. At the time, Mr Morris was the highest paid NHS Trust CEO in the country; receiving a salary of £275,000 per annum. In March 2015 the trust was placed into special measures following a CQC report into Whipps Cross Hospital. In May 2015 the CQC said it was seriously understaffed, focussed too little on safety and had cancelled operations on numerous occasions because there were too few beds, rating it inadequate.

The trust was one of 26 responsible for half of the national growth in patients waiting more than four hours in accident and emergency over the 2014/5 winter.

In June 2015 more than 80 doctors signed a letter highlighting “unsafe” bed occupancy rates, cuts impacting on staffing levels and overuse of agency nurses at the trust, and demanding that the private finance initiative contract should be bailed out. The trust reported 1200 vacancies - 1/5 of the nursing workforce in July 2015.

The trust spent £83.6 million on agency staff in 2014/5.

Hospitals

Barts Health runs five hospitals:

• Mile End Hospital
• Newham University Hospital
• The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel
• St Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield in the City
• Whipps Cross University Hospital

See also

• List of NHS trusts

External links

• Barts Health NHS Trust