Nick Hulme believes the merger has allowed for a better outcome for patients over the last five yearsA merger between two hospitals has been a "significant success", the trust's chief executive has said.
Instead the trust is now starting microwave ablation therapy, which is a specialist treatment for kidney and liver cancers that limits the amount of radiation a patient is exposed to. The trade union also said some support service work at Ipswich Hospital had been outsourced to a company called OCS, whereas similar staff at Colchester were employed directly by the NHS - a situation the trust told Unison it would look at.
As the NHS reaches its 75-year milestone, care is becoming more personalised and more treatments are available. We can therefore expect to see further mergers in the future, or at least groups of hospitals working together to provide specialist services at different sites.