HEALTH leaders hope the Government will not meddle in our hospitals once they become part of a foundation trust.

Jeff Crawshaw, director of human resources for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, says top Government health leader Lord Darzi is giving mixed messages to the local NHS.

The trust manages the county’s three main hospitals, including Worcestershire Royal in Worcester.

Lord Darzi is the surgeon who conducted a wide-ranging review of the NHS, published in its final form in June, which called for clinically-driven local healthcare with more emphasis on quality, flexibility and patients.

Although the acute trust board has welcomed the findings of the review, a report by Mr Crawshaw also expresses concern that the Government will “erode the freedoms” health chiefs hope to gain as a foundation trust.

Historically, this gives NHS trusts more independence from Government, more freedom to borrow money and allows the public and patients more say.

Health leaders hope the trust can become a foundation trust by May 1, 2009, if they hit targets set by the strategic health authority, the local arm of the Government.

Mr Crawshaw said: “If there’s an issue about the strategy it is that it seems to contradict the main Darzi report which is about local empowerment. On the one hand he’s looking at empowering local organisations but on the other hand there’s a framework being proposed which will introduce a range of controls and that may be not what we as a foundation trust want to see.”

Mr Crawshaw made his comments at a trust board meeting at Kidderminster Hospital as leaders discussed the NHS Next stage review final report, called “High Quality Care for All”.

John Rostill, chief executive, said: “The devil is in the detail here.

“There’s a lot of good ideas but at the moment there’s no real indication of how some of these groups will perform and where the real responsibilities will be.

“We wouldn’t want our flexibility reduced.”

The report itself also mentions the view that a “one size fits all” approach will not be suitable to all health organisations, a view shared by GPs over controversial plans to introduce the next generation of health centres, one of which is earmarked for Worcester.

Staff will be consulted about the implications of the report later this month.