12:34, 30 May 2025<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_escenic-3.jpg\")
Bristol Royal Infirmary and Southmead Hospital<\/p>\n
An invisible “artificial line\u201d runs across Bristol and NHS bosses fear that which side of it people live on could impact their care.<\/p>\n
This is the line between the two NHS Trusts which cover the city: the North Bristol NHS Trust<\/a> (NBT) which runs Southmead<\/a>, and University Hospitals Bristol and Weston<\/a> (UHBW) which runs the Bristol Royal Infirmary, city centre hospitals, and Weston General.<\/p>\n Tim Whittlestone, chief medical officer of NBT, said: \u201cI used to live in Henleaze<\/a> and I was really worried that if I got chest pain one day, I was really worried which way the ambulance would turn at the end of my street. Because I knew if it turned one way as opposed to the other way, I might have a different outcome. And that is not on.\u201d<\/p>\n Now NHS bosses want to end the disparity between the city\u2019s hospitals. Mr Whittlestone was addressing councillors from the health overview and scrutiny committees of Bristol City Council<\/a>, North Somerset<\/a> Council, and South Gloucestershire<\/a> Council at a meeting in common held in Bristol City Hall on May 22.<\/p>\n Mr Whittlestone, a consultant urologist, has worked in the NHS<\/a> in Bristol for 30 years. He said: \u201cNothing has frustrated me more than the artificial line we have drawn through our geography which says that if I live on this side of the street I am going to end up being cared for at Southmead and if I lived on the other side of the street I\u2019d be cared for in Weston-super-Mare<\/a> or the Bristol Royal Infirmary.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that the the urology teams of each trust had competed with each other when he joined, which he warned was \u201csometimes at the detriment of patient care.\u201d NBT has since taken over urology services for the whole of the area.<\/p>\n But Mr Whittlestone said that there were 70 different services which were still duplicated between UHBW and NBT. He said: “Those services compete for people, they compete for staff, they compete for patients, and they compete for funding and resources. And it’s not in the best interest of our population to have that competition exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Now more services could be run together as a \u201csingle managed service entity.\u201d Since December 2023, the two trusts had already been run as a sort of personal union, sharing the same chair and chief executive. In April the two trusts officially became a hospital group, Bristol NHS Group.<\/p>\n He insisted that single managed services would continue to use all the current facilities. He said: \u201cThe agenda is not to close anything. The agenda is to make it equal access for the people of our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Whittlestone said: \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t matter which way the ambulance turned. And I hope that by managing services singularly, means that we have the same excellent standard of care regardless of where you live.\u201d<\/p>\n Cariology has already become a single managed service between the two groups and Mr Whittlestone said it was already bringing benefits for patients. 44 more duplicated services have been identified to become single managed services within the next 18 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now a new plan aims to ensure both NHS trusts provide ‘the same excellent standard of care’ John…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,3893,748,393,4884,20078,211,34425,11157,10302,10963,16,15,55549,11158],"class_list":{"0":"post-144914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-city-council","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-henleaze","14":"tag-nhs","15":"tag-north-bristol-nhs-trust","16":"tag-north-somerset-council","17":"tag-south-gloucestershire-council","18":"tag-southmead","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-university-hospitals-bristol-nhs-foundation-trust","22":"tag-weston-super-mare"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114598501713798085","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/0_BRI_PG_240724balloon-415.jpg\")
Southmead Hospital in Bristol, from a hot air balloon(Image: PAUL GILLIS \/ Reach PLC)<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2_JS201472997-copy.jpg\")
Weston General Hospital(Image: BBC)<\/p>\n