Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust


Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust runs Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, an NHS district general hospital in Great Western Road, Gloucester, England. It serves western and southern Gloucestershire and parts of Herefordshire. It also runs Cheltenham General Hospital.
The trust is currently under the leadership of chair Peter Lachecki and chief executive Deborah Lee.

History

The present organisation was formed in 2002 by a merger of Gloucestershire Royal and East Gloucestershire NHS Trusts.
In 2017 the trust investigated the establishing of a subsidiary company. On 28 February 2018 the trust board approved the recommendations which resulted in the creation of Gloucestershire Hospitals Subsidiary Company Ltd, to which 675 support staff were transferred on 1 April 2018. The intention was to achieve VAT benefits, as well as pay bill savings, by recruiting new staff on less expensive non-NHS contracts. VAT benefits arise because NHS trusts can only claim VAT back on a small subset of goods and services they buy. The Value Added Tax Act 1994 provides a mechanism through which NHS trusts can qualify for refunds on contracted out services.

Performance

The Trust was highlighted by NHS England as having 3 of the 148 reported never events in the period from April to September 2013.
In 2009/10 private patients from the UK and from overseas paid the trust £4.4 million, but that had dropped to £3.2 million by 2013/14.
A Care Quality Commission in March 2015 found insufficient consultants in emergency departments, that A&E waiting-time targets were constantly not being met and patients were having to queue in emergency department corridors for treatment.

It was put into special measures in October 2016 after failings in financial governance.