A ROW is brewing over the future of Queen Mary's Hospital if it becomes a borough hospital in the planned reorganisation of hospital services.
Fundamental differences have arisen between the hospital trust board and Bexley Care Trust on the form the borough hospital will take, if proposals under A Picture of Health are approved.
The trust board has accused the care trust of trying to remove services from Queen Mary's "by the back door".
But the care trust says the accusation is "entirely unfounded" and by publishing such a statement, the hospital is "breeding anxiety and
confusion".
Queen Mary's has been planning for the possibility it will lose all its acute services, and at its last meeting the trust board discussed a paper on A Vision for the Future of the hospital site in Sidcup.
It said it had been working with clinicians from the hospital, the care trust and Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, which deals with mental health.
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The board said "they have developed an exciting vision of care, integrated across primary, secondary and mental health service" which it claims "delivers huge benefits for patients".
The hospital claims the paper was to be agreed by Queen Mary's and the care trust's boards this month and be used to support the eventual A Picture of Health decision.
Instead, Queen Mary's accuses the care trust of taking its own paper on the future of the hospital, which had not been seen or agreed by Queen Mary's, to the care trust board.
And the hospital board says the care trust paper raises a major difference between the two
approaches which could "entirely erode the vision developed by clinicians".
It says, while the joint paper envisages integrated care on the Queen Mary's site, the care trust model sees all secondary care - outpatient activity, urgent and minor care, rehabilition, diagnostics andnon-acute hospital beds - removed from the hospital's control and placed into community services run by the care trust.
The only exception would be planned surgery.
It says this could save the care trust money, but could compromise clinical care, make the financial problems of the acute hospital trusts worse and is not what A Picture of Health consulted on.
The care trust claims the paper it put to its board was a collaborative one.
It says speculation by Queen Mary's about the "ownership and organisational structures
is unhelpful and misleading."
It says no clinical concerns have been raised and "to imply services would be removed is at odds with the purpose of our vision".
The care trust added: "We regret the board paper has a number of misleading claims, which we have challenged with the hospital's trust."
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