THEY won their legal battle against a patients’ campaign group which tried to halt the proposed merger of services at Poole and the Royal Bournemouth Hospitals.

Now the management of both hospitals has gone a step further and announced that they are going to appoint a joint chief executive to run the establishments.

Tony Spotswood, Chief Executive at Bournemouth, and Debbie Fleming, Chief Executive, Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust issued a joint message to staff entitled 'Planning for our Future'.

“Poole Hospital and the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals have been working closely together for many years to provide the best services possible for all our patients,” they said.

“There are now plans to develop this close relationship further to ensure we can carry out the recommendations of the Dorset Clinical Services Review. This will see the Royal Bournemouth Hospital become the major emergency hospital and Poole Hospital the major planned hospital for east Dorset.

"As part of this, we will be appointing a joint Chief Executive who will oversee both trusts. We will also appoint a joint Chair of both trusts. The trusts will then create joint leaders across four of our main clinical services - trauma and orthopaedics; theatres, including anaesthetic services; emergency services and older peoples medicine. All of these leadership appointments will be on a temporary or interim basis until the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has considered a proposal from both trusts to merge to create one trust running both hospitals. We hope that this could take place between April 2020 and April 2021.

"We will now work quickly to put these arrangements into place and expect to have a joint Chief Executive and Chair by 1 January 2019, and then the joint leaders of the four services being appointed later in the year."

The executives thanked all staff involved so far 'to ensure we continue to provide the best services to our patients in the future.'

Under Dorset CCG’s plans, five of 13 community hospitals across Dorset – including one in Wareham and in St Leonard’s – will close, as well as Poole’s Accident and Emergency department.

The reorganisation is aimed at avoiding a projected funding shortfall, estimated to be at least £158m a year by 2021.