Merger will boost health care across the region

Health leaders will gather in Newcastle this week to hear how a proposed merger between two of the region’s leading healthcare innovators will help tackle health inequalities across the North East and North Cumbria.

The merger of Blue Stone Collaborative and Ways to Wellness will create an innovation hub that will trial new methods to improve healthcare for patients and their families before, during and after treatment.

Well established links with health care providers and commissioners, including voluntary organisations, will allow rapid scale up of successful innovations and so share best practice across the area served by the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System.

Ways to Wellness is a social prescribing initiative launched in April 2015 in the west of Newcastle upon Tyne, where deprivation is higher than the average in England, life expectancy is lower and people with long term health conditions experience high rates of unplanned admissions to hospital.

Results have shown that of the first 3000 patients who engaged with the service and were subsequently discharged, 86% showed improvement in well being. In addition, engagement with Ways to Wellness reduced secondary care cost per patient by 27% - in one year alone this equated to a reduction of £1.56 million as well as freeing up GP time to deal with other patients.

Blue Stone Collaborative has a proven track record in supporting public and third sector organisations working with local commissioners and their funding bodies to shape and improve the planning and delivery of health care.

Through merger, the new organisation – which will be known as Ways To Wellness - will be better placed to deliver across the area covered by the newly created North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System, the body which commissions and oversees the delivery of health and care across the region.

Under the proposed merger the Chief Executive of Ways to Wellness, Sandra Mitchell-Phillips, will become Chief Executive of the merged organisation. Brendan Hill, who is the current Executive Chair of Blue Stone Collaborative, will join the Board of the merged organisation.

Sandra Mitchell-Phillips, Chief Executive of Ways to Wellness, said:

“I’m delighted that the boards of both organisations have agreed to merge, and that I will be taking the merged organisation forward as Chief Executive. This will mark an exciting new chapter in the story of Ways to Wellness, which has developed a strong reputation for innovation over the past seven years. We are ambitious to take what we’ve learned and make a difference to the lives and wellbeing of even more people across the region.”

Brendan Hill, Executive Chair of Blue Stone Collaborative, said:

“Blue Stone’s role over recent years has developed significantly in championing VCS provider involvement in health and care initiatives. We have hosted and facilitated prototypes and projects with a focus on learning to help improve and reshape delivery. Coming together with Ways to Wellness will enable so much more of this type of work to be supported. I look forward to supporting Sandra and the merged team in their new shared endeavours."

The merger has been approved by the Boards of both organisations who will now start working together more closely, pending formal approval of the merger from the Charity Commission.

Details of the proposed merger will be outlined to a gathering of leading health care professionals at Newcastle’s historic Common Room on Friday July 15.

Both Mrs Mitchell-Phillips and Mr Hill are due to address the event as well as Sam Allen, the Chief Executive Designate of the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System.