ST HELENS and Knowsley Local Medical Committee (LMC) has pledged to 'fight tooth and nail' against proposals put forward by a health watchdog to merge two NHS trusts.

The Community Health Council believes the merger of St Helens and Knowsley Community Health Trust and the St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals Trust would save more than £250,000 and improve services to patients.

However, the Local Medical Committee says that the proposed merger could be detrimental to the services provided to the community.

In a letter to Tony Richards (CHC chief officer), Dr Colin Ford, chairman of the LMC, explained: "The St Helens and Knowsley LMC discussed your proposals for the unification of local NHS trusts. The committee voted unanimously that we were in complete and total opposition.

"It was felt that the large hospital trust would swallow the community trust and that decision-making would be dominated by secondary care considerations. The community trust are being asked to carry a bigger and bigger share of the workload in providing patient services, and we feel that in many instances there should be disinvestment in the hospital service to reinforce primary care services. It was felt by the members that there would be a fall in good will and morale if community trust staff were controlled by a large hospital-dominated organisation."

The letter continued: "The St Helens & Knowsley Trust provides secondary care services for about 55 to 60% of the patients in the St Helens and Knowsley catchment area, the rest being provided by hospitals such as Aintree, Warrington, Wigan and the Royal Liverpool. It seems illogical that an organisation controlled by St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals Trust should direct the level and funding of primary care services for these patients.

"Primary care medical services have developed a good working relationship with the community trust to the total benefit of the patients we treat and we would deplore the breaking-up of any such relationship.

"I repeat that we are in total opposition to your proposals and will fight tooth and nail to make sure they are not put into place."

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