Foundation trusts revel in new powers, report says

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7508.68

BMJ 2005;331:68 (9 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7508.68

News roundup

Foundation trusts revel in new powers, report says

London Rebecca Coombes

Foundation trusts are making the most of their freedoms to invest in new facilities and beds but are not outperforming ordinary NHS trusts, a review by the Healthcare Commission concluded this week.

The review, the first of its kind and the result of visits to the first 20 foundation trusts, also found that four trusts were projecting large deficits of more than �3m ($5.3m; �4.4m).

The commission concludes that, overall, foundation trusts had "hit the ground running" and have wasted no time exercising new freedoms to borrow money and to speed up decisions on opening new wards and operating theatres.

For example, it took just 11 weeks for the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust to plan additional wards and modular theatres—whereas it would possibly have taken two and a half years to go through the strategic health authority, the Healthcare Commission said.

But although there had . . . [Full text of this article]

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