Patients at Harefield Hospital are benefiting from a newly improved service offering advice on skin conditions, thanks to the hospital’s merger with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
The dermatology service is key for Harefield’s inpatients, many of whom need to stay in the hospital for a while and are particularly susceptible to skin complaints due to their condition and some of the drugs they need to take, which can compromise the body’s natural defences.
Even with careful monitoring and treatment, ulcers and sores can develop and so treating these skin conditions is really important for the patient’s future health, quite apart from any discomfort caused. There is also a clinic provided for outpatients by the Royal Free Hospital.
Harefield has had a dermatology service for many years provided by a local hospital, however that changed to Guy’s and St Thomas’, following the merger. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in the country, Guy’s and St Thomas’ has a much larger dermatology department with 16 different specialist teams, so it has both greater resources, and a wider spread of more specialist expertise.
“We’re really pleased we’ve been able to improve our dermatology service in this way. Guy’s and St Thomas’ has a more comprehensive service and a really significant, expert team, so everyone agreed that with our new merged organisation this was a just a really good solution. We’ve already benefitted from some excellent advice,” said Harefield’s general manager Michael White.
Jemima Mellerio, consultant dermatologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’, said: “We are delighted to be able to assist our colleagues at Harefield with expert dermatology telephone support during working hours. We very much hope that this will continue to be a positive and fruitful service.”
Michael added: “This is such a clear example of why the merger is good for our patients. It is exactly this kind of benefit we wanted to bring them. By merging with such a substantial organisation it has meant we can immediately bring our patients an improvement in their care. It may only be one aspect of their care, but it’s a really important one in this case and it is great to see it already having an impact.”
Merger Year One 
This story is among a number we will be featuring over the next few weeks, marking a year since the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals merged with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, on 1 February 2021, and demonstrating the benefits of the two organisations coming together.
Our first story featured featured cardiac surgeons Mario Petrou and Kamran Baig, who spoke about how collaboration between the hospitals has helped the surgical teams to carry out urgent cardiac surgery operations.