Foundation Trust
Kingston Hospital is applying to become an NHS Foundation Trust (FT). FT status is something that the Hospital has been working towards for some time.
As part of the Government White Paper, Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, all Hospital’s in England are required to become or form part of an FT by 2013/14. FTs are still a part of the NHS and regulated in the same way, but are directly accountable to their patients, staff and members, instead of central government.
We are applying to become a FT because we believe that this is the best way to maintain local services and make sure that local communities have a greater say in how things are run. We believe that being an FT will enable us to further invest in and develop our services, so that we are able to provide our local population with the best care, treatment and facilities.
We currently expect to achieve FT status by Autumn 2012.
What are Foundation Trusts?
Our services will still be the same as they are now but as an FT we will have more freedom to decide how to run their affairs and deliver services and members of our FT will have a greater say about how the Hospital is run.
Foundation Trusts are:
- Still part of the NHS
- Free and are not run for profit
- Expected to keep to NHS standards and meet performance targets and
- Inspected regularly.
They will:
- Give local communities and local people a way of influencing what happens in the trust and the way we develop in the future
- Give us greater freedom about what we do locally and how we do it
- Give us freedom to borrow money to invest in developments, change the way we do things and make services better, quicker, with more choice for local people.
Membership
As an FT we will be supported by members. As we have had aspirations to become a FT for some time, we have been recruiting an active Membership and now have over 4,000 public members. Membership is open to all individuals over 14 years of age who live within our public membership constituency, irrespective of gender, social status, race, political aspirations, disability or religion.
If you are interested in finding out more about membership or would like to become a member, please click here.
