Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust is an

NHS trust An NHS trust is an organisational unit within the National Health Services of England and Wales, generally serving either a geographical area or a specialised function (such as an ambulance service). In any particular location there may be several ...

which was formed on 1 October 2013 and is responsible for running two acute hospitals, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and

University Hospital Lewisham University Hospital Lewisham (formerly known as Lewisham Hospital) is a teaching hospital run by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and serving the London Borough of Lewisham. It is now affiliated with King's College London and forms part of the ...

, in addition to community health services in

Lewisham Lewisham ( ) is an area of southeast London, England, south of Charing Cross. It is the principal area of the London Borough of Lewisham, and was within the Historic counties of England, historic county of Kent until 1889. It is identified in ...

. The trust was formed by the acquisition of the acquisition of Queen Elizabeth Hospital by Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust upon the dissolution of

South London Healthcare NHS Trust South London Healthcare NHS Trust was an English National Health Service trust which ran three hospitals in south east London. It was dissolved on 1 October 2013 after going into administration. South London Healthcare NHS Trust was formed in 2 ...

. Despite extensive local opposition and legal challenges in Lewisham, the merger was approved by

Secretary of State for Health The secretary of state for health and social care, also referred to as the health secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, responsible for the work of the Department of Health and Social Care. The in ...

Jeremy Hunt Sir Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt (born 1 November 1966) is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2022 to 2024 and Foreign Secretary from 2018 to 2019, having previously served as Secretary of State for Health a ...

on 26 September 2013. Both hospitals continue to operate

emergency department An emergency department (ED), also known as an accident and emergency department (A&E), emergency room (ER), emergency ward (EW) or casualty department, is a medical treatment facility specializing in emergency medicine, the Acute (medicine), ...

acute medicine Acute medicine, also known as acute internal medicine (AIM), is a specialty within internal medicine concerned with the immediate and early specialist management of adult patients with a wide range of medical conditions who present in hospital as em ...

services and maternity units following the High Court decision which ruled that the plan to close services at Lewisham Hospital was unlawful, a judgement which was subsequently upheld in the

Court of Appeal An appellate court, commonly called a court of appeal(s), appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to Hearing (law), hear a Legal case, case upon appeal from a trial court or other ...

History

The trust was established as the Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust on 22 March 1993, and became operational on 1 April 1993.

Overseas patients

From 2015 the trust used

Experian Experian plc is a multinational corporation, multinational data broker and consumer credit reporting company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Experian collects and aggregates information on more than 1 billion people and businesses including ...

to identify overseas visitors who could be charged for NHS treatment. In 2018–19 it issued bills to ineligible patients for £4.1 million, slightly down on the previous year, but collected only £528,000. In September 2019 they suspended this policy and the contract was cancelled in January 2020. An independent review subsequently found some of its patients were left feeling "uncomfortable, scared or unable to seek timely treatment" by this approach, although the panel had received "independent assurances" their application of the current framework was "in line" with legislative guidance.

Performance

The Trust was given an £8.5m bailout of public dividend capital by the Department of Health to cover an unexpected deficit for the financial year 2014–15. The

General Medical Council The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of physician, medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the pu ...

put the trust on an enhanced monitoring list in February 2017 after complaints from junior doctors about "clinical supervision, serious incident reporting, trust leadership, rotas and rota management, workload, educational supervision, pastoral support and access to educational opportunities". It was inspected by the

Care Quality Commission The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care of the United Kingdom. It was established in 2009 to regulate and inspect health and social care providers in England. It ...

in 2014 and was rated inadequate. In 2016 it had improved and was rated ‘requires improvement’. The maternity and gynaecology department was rated as good. It planned for a year end deficit of £22.8 million for 2017-18 but by the end of July it was £12.4 million behind plan. In January 2018, it had to borrow £95 million on a turnover of £539 million. It had a plan, which was not achieved, equalling 8.6% of turnover, the closure of seven wards and a reduction in the average length of stay from 8.1 to 4.7 days. Its elective procedures are outsourced, orthopaedic surgery to

BMI Healthcare BMI Healthcare was an independent provider of private healthcare, offering treatment to private patients, medically insured patients, and NHS patients. , it had 54 private hospitals and healthcare facilities across the UK, with headquarters in ...

and vascular surgery to Frontière Médicale.

Choir

The Trust's

choir A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

, the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir, appeared on Gareth Malone's

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

competition show '' The Choir: Sing While You Work'' in 2013, where they finished second. They reached Christmas singles chart number one in 2015 with their charity record " A Bridge over You", beating Justin Bieber's top-selling "Love Yourself" in the process. In 2020, they recorded a version of Bieber's "Holy", with the two former rivals combining to challenge for the Christmas number one spot. However, when the record was released on 18 December 2020 it still had a credit for Chance the Rapper, like the original version, which first entered the UK chart on 25 September 2020. As the new record was seen as just a remix, "Holy" ended up at Number 41 in the Christmas chart with 17,594 sales, after being classed as per the original release with no additional credit for the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir. They also were seen performing

Joy to the World "Joy to the World" is an English hymn and Christmas carol. It was written in 1719 by the English minister and hymnist Isaac Watts. It is usually sung to the American composer Lowell Mason's 1848 arrangement of a tune attributed to George Fride ...

after the Queen's Speech on Christmas Day 2020.

References

External links

*
''Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust''
on the NHS website
Inspection reports
from the

{{Authority control NHS trusts Health in the London Borough of Lewisham Health in the Royal Borough of Greenwich