The University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust provides adult district general hospital services for South Birmingham as well as specialist treatments for the West Midlands.
The trust comprises three hospitals on two sites, which are 1.5 miles apart. These hospitals are the older Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham (QEHB), and the Selly Oak Hospital, Selly Oak. More than 553,000 patients attend the hospitals every year for services ranging from a simple outpatient appointment to a heart transplant.
The new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) is adjacent to its older namesake and connected to it by a footbridge. QEHB began receiving patients at its Emergency Department on 16 June 2010, and will eventually replace nearly all clinical services at the two older services. The Selly Oak Hospital Accident & Emergency Department has now closed and in-patients from the hospital are being transferred to the QEHB between 16-22 June, but outpatient services continued until 2011. Selly Oak Hospital will eventually close completely and the site redeveloped.
On 30 June 2004, the Trust received authorisation to become one of the first NHS Foundation Trusts in England, currently under the leadership of chief executive Dame Julie Moore, who succeeded Mark Britnell.[1]