Northampton and Kettering hospitals to fall under new group

Northampton and Kettering Hospitals will fall under the new University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) NHS Group

A new group looking after both Kettering and Northampton Hospitals has been formed.

The University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN) NHS Group will come in to effect from Thursday.

The two Trusts remain separate organisations and will each continue to provide services such as maternity, children's and A&E.

The new group's chief executive Simon Weldon said the move would "create a sustainable future" for both hospitals.

UHN has also achieved University Hospital status, which will see it partner both the University of Leicester and University of Northampton.

Chief executive Simon Weldon said the creation of the new group is an exciting new chapter for health care in Northamptonshire

Those behind the move hope it will drive greater equality of access to services for people living locally, improve patient care and enhance career and training opportunities for hospital staff.

The hope is that the group will lead to greater sharing of services between the hospitals and allow services currently operating outside of the county to be moved back in to Northamptonshire.

Mr Weldon said the new group signified a "very exciting new chapter for health and care provision in Northamptonshire, enabling us to create a sustainable future for both Northampton and Kettering General Hospitals".

He said the two hospitals were "really excited about working together to broaden access to services and improve the quality of patient care we provide".

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In a joint statement, Medical Directors Mr Matt Metcalfe, from Northampton Hospital, and Dr Rabia Imtiaz, from Kettering Hospital, said becoming a University Hospital Group "means we can share our resources where appropriate, and create bigger and stronger teams to cope more effectively with the rising demands for hospital care".

The statement added: "In many clinical areas, size does matter. You need sufficient resources to provide each service safely and effectively, and to secure these resources you need to ensure your clinicians are seeing enough patient cases."