HEALTH bosses have insisted a merger of Colchester and Ipswich hospitals - set to save them £22 million over five years - will improve patient experience.

The two hospitals will become part of the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust if the proposal is given the go-ahead by directors to form as one organisation next week.

It will manage community services in east Suffolk as well as Colchester and Ipswich hospitals.

Nick Hulme, who is chief executive of both hospitals, said the £22 million savings being made through the merger would be invested where they are most needed.

“We are promising to shift our focus on to the way we value time in health care.

“The unnecessary stress we add to those who are already burdened by ill health is simply unacceptable.

“Delays in treatment, long waits sitting around in outpatient clinics and patients unable to plan their lives because of our poor organisation will become a thing of the past as we deliver the vision we have set out.” Mr Hulme said there had been no public consultation over the merger because the trusts are “not making any significant change to clinical care”.

A business case, which has not yet been made public, will set out finer details of the trust’s financial model and plans for how the new merged trust will work.

The trusts currently have a combined deficit of nearly £33 million.

Bosses say financial savings will mostly come from spending less on overheads and reducing duplication across two organisations.

That money will then be available for frontline services.

The new organisation will have an annual budget of around £700 million. It will employ nearly 10,000 staff to look after more than 750,000 residents.

Mr Hulme said he couldn’t rule out redundancies adding: “There will be posts that will change and there will be posts that won’t have a function any more.

“But we have a staff turnover of ten per cent - 1,000 come and go - so we would go down the route of natural wastage of staff.

“There will be increased scrutiny of when staff leave to see if we need that like for like post.”

Mr Hulme admitted there was “no plan B’ should the merger fail.

But he insisted the proposed merger had taken so long because the trusts had wanted to get it right and for it not to be “too ambitious”.

The trusts say the merger aims to have patients coming to hospital for an appointment or clinical need and a focus is how technology can reduce attendances.

Dr Barbara Buckley, medical director for both trusts, said: “This merger is not based on any plans to move services from one hospital to the other.

“In the future, our doctors may want to change some services to improve them but we would consult the public fully on any such proposals.”

Both hospitals will continue to provide A&E, obstetric-led maternity and 24/7 emergency admissions.

The vast majority of outpatient appointments will continue to take place as they do now.

Mr Hulme said the 20 mile distance between the sites meant transport would be carefully considered with longer term plans including a patients’s hopper bus.

However, he said the grander plan meant less travelling for patients.

Dr Buckley added: “It wouldn’t make any sense to have large number of patients travelling up and down the A12. Neither site is big enough to consume all the work from each other’s site.”

But they will look at how community hospitals in Harwich, Clacton and Halstead can be used, along with community services.

If agreed, the case will be sent to national NHS teams with a final decision being made by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.