Future Fit: No hospital sell-off plan, says Shropshire surgeon

Mark Cheetham, who works for Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust answered a number of questions during live online chat. which queried whether the organisation would sell out to multi-national companies such as Virgin.

It was the second time such a tweet chat, which ran between 7pm and 8pm on Tuesday, had been held to discuss the Future Fit process, and the focus of the conversation was to find out what the changes would mean for the man in the street.

But a Twitter user called Sean Martin asked: "Do you think a dedicated elective site might get interest from private companies looking to buy NHS hospitals?"

Mr Cheetham replied: "I do not. We are not interested in selling up. In fact I would like that site to draw in NHS operations which are currently been done in private hospitals."

Again Mr Martin said: "With companies like Virgin buying up NHS hospitals, surely a hospital with only elective care would be easier for a private business to plan and draw up invoices for. I'm not saying #futurefit is a conspiracy, just worried that in the future private companies might come sniffing."

But Mr Cheetham said: "They might come sniffing, but @sathNHS ain't selling!"

Another user called Anna added: "So, is this an absolute guarantee that SaTH would not outsource provision of services at a planned care site to a private provider? If you don't have the authority to say that, can anyone else guarantee that?"

Mr Cheetham replied: "In my opinion it would be daft to sell off whole services."

Kim Richardson said: "Is it true that Urgent Care centres are to be run by private companies? If so which?"

But Mr Cheetham replied: "No plans for that as far as I know. I would like them to be run by SaTh - that seems the most sensible thing to me."

!Shemmie asked: "What is the planned date to announce which area wins, and which loses?"

Dr Cheetham replied: "The public consultation is due to run for 14 weeks from the 30th May and then we will need to process the feedback from the public. I anticipate a decision at some point early in the new year."

!Shemmie asked: "Is there any idea how long it will take to implement option 1 or 2?"

Dr Cheetham replied: "It's is estimated it will take about five years to complete. There will be phases to the building work and some of the benefits will be realised sooner than that. Our architects are working on different plans to phase the work to maximise benefits and minimise impact of the workplace. Change on this scale is not easy and we have to do the best for the most people. Having said that since the £312 million was announced, we have recruited nine consultants "