Fears are mounting that patients could face an inferior service at Southend Hospital as it prepares to merge with two other hospitals with higher levels of debt.

The Mid and South Essex Transformation and Sustainability Partnership is looking at rationalising services across Southend, Basildon and Broomfield hospitals in order to cut costs.

Integral to this will be a merger of the three hospital trusts – but they have very different financial backgrounds.

Broomfield Hospital has a hefty £44million deficit as of January 31 and Basildon Hospital is fairing a little better with a £26m deficit. Southend Hospital, by comparison, has a relatively small £7m deficit, but that could change if the deficits were shared if the hospital merger goes ahead

About half the acute hospitals in England were involved in a merger during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The mergers were to allow potentially failing hospitals to improve their clinical and financial performance.

In 2012, one of the largest healthcare mergers in the country saw three London-based trusts, Barts and the London NHS trust, Newham Hospital and Whipps Cross Hospital become one. Barts Health as it is now delivered £9m in back office savings in its first year.

However, Research by Bristol University shows mergers are not an effective way of dealing with poorly performing hospitals.

By comparing hospitals which did and didn’t merge, researchers found poor financial performance continued, so that hospitals that merged had larger deficits post-merger than pre-merger.

Researcher, Carol Propper, found admissions fell by about 10 per cent four years after merger but her report adds: “The length of time people had to wait for elective treatment rose post-merger, and there were few indications that clinical quality improved.

“So on average the impact of mergers was simply to reduce hospital-based activity without any gain in productivity or reduction in losses.”

The research concludes: “Our study indicates that, just as in the private sector, mergers offer much before the event but fail to deliver on their promises. In the case of the NHS, all mergers have done is to reduce hospital activity.”

Those campaigning to prevent the NHS being privatised believe the mergers and a current strategy to fragment different areas of healthcare by introducing specialist centres in specific hospitals – as is currently being proposed in south mid Essex – is part of a wider Government strategy.

Norman Traub, a former haematology consultant at Southend Hospital and secretary of the Southend Keep the NHS public campaign group, said: “The whole merger is part of the plan to degrade service in Southend Hospital. With the three deficits Southend will get an inferior service. Southend Hospital is really being downgraded. Under the partnership plans you will no longer be able to have emergency surgery at Southend. You will be sent to Basildon.

“We fought against having our A&E downgraded but the whole hospital is being downgraded.”

Mr Traub added: “They are doing this to deliberately fragment services because they will be easier to privatise different parts of the NHS that way. They are deliberately destroying a publicly run, free at the point of delivery services

Mike Fieldhouse, from the Save Southend NHS campaign group, said: “The simple fact is, that if the government fails to provide adequate funding for the NHS and doesn’t train enough health professionals to meet the country’s requirements then inevitably hospitals will have financial deficits.

“The merger of the three hospital trusts will almost certainly make the situation worse.!

The hospitals say no one will lose out. Tom Abell, deputy chief executive of Mid Essex, Southend and Basildon hospitals, said: “We are in the very early stages of investigating how a merged organisation could work as part of the process towards merging, which was agreed by the three trust boards in January.

“We are not yet at the point of having detailed plans for how finances will work between merged Trusts, however we are committed to ensuring that no individual site would be disadvantaged by future proposals.”

Sir David Amess, MP for Southend West said: “My understanding is that the debt of Basildon and Broomfield Hospitals will have no impact on service provision at Southend Hospital. However, I will as a matter of urgency raise it with the person responsible for managing all three of the Hospitals, Clare Panniker.”