One year, after Keech Hospice Care merged with Bedford Daycare Hospice, clinical director Elaine Tolliday, reflects on how the new organisation is shaping and the changes on the horizon.
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What led to the merger?

Bedford Daycare Hospice was a small, independent charity caring for adults with a palliative diagnosis from its Bedford site. Keech Hospice Care is situated 17 miles away in Luton. It cares for adults in Luton and Bedfordshire, and children in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Milton Keynes. The decision to merge was taken to help secure Bedford Daycare Hospice’s future and to extend and enhance the service offering for all patients and families.

Holistic healthcare

By far, the greatest success story to come from our organisations merging is the benefits and choice it has brought to patients. Bedford didn’t previously have CQC registration, so weren’t able to offer the services we do now. These improvements have led to us increasing our reach in north Bedfordshire and being able to increase and enhance our service offering in the area.

Our patient services are now far more holistic. Previously, a patient would have gone to the Bedford site to attend their group, perhaps once a week, and at a set time. Now, there’s so much more for patients to access. They can come to Luton to use the hydrotherapy pool and access our in-patient services, for example. It’s a much more patient-centred approach.

Radical changes to retail#

Before the merger, Keech had 33 retail stores and Bedford Daycare Hospice had 5. We launched a major project to modernise and refresh the Bedford Daycare shops, which involved retraining staff and integrating a new stock replenishment system. All this had to be done while being very mindful of and sensitive to people’s feelings. As such, the external signage remained in place – and still does today – while the branding inside the shops gradually evolved.

Our shops are all now well stocked, viable businesses with staff and volunteers that are trained in effective charity retail and can choose to grow and develop through our professional development pathway.

One organisation

Everyone employed by Bedford Daycare Hospice transferred over to the new, larger organisation. 23 staff plus seven bank staff, including a senior nurse, administrators and members of the retail team all TUPE’d over and, more importantly, remain with us a year on. There was only one staff member who chose not to come over and that was because she retired.

Two members of Bedford Daycare Hospice’s board joined the Keech board. That allowed us to better understand the needs of people in Bedford to ensure our offering is attractive and relevant.

The staff and board members who transferred over were integrated from day one, which helped us achieve the feeling that we were no longer two separate organisations, but rather one joint one that happened to operate across two sites.

Future changes

We’re having a full rebrand in January 2025, which will reflect our united organisation. It’s a much-needed fresh new look but will still be recognisable to patients and supporters.

Bedford’s retail shops will receive new signage too. It will be more aligned with Keech while being respectful of their history.

Next on the horizon is to make some alterations to the interior of the Bedford site. Since the service offering there has broadened, the current layout isn’t necessarily as conducive as it could be for patient access. We’ll also be updating the aesthetics to bring it in line with the newly merged organisation.

Key learnings

Even though ours was quite a small merger, you still have to go through all the same due diligence as you would with a larger one. Although we’d never say never to another merger in the future, there would have to be a very good strategic reason for doing it, as even the best planned merger can be time-consuming and disruptive with lots of human factors to take into consideration.

A merger should never be about simply ‘getting bigger’; there has to be a sound reason behind it and cultures and values need to be in sync. In our case, there was a very strong argument for the merger – to better serve patients.

We’re grateful we researched thoroughly before merging. We talked to others in the hospice sector who’d been through mergers – some with successful outcomes; others less so. Being forewarned meant being forearmed. Listening closely to Bedford Daycare Hospice’s trustees also meant we were able to mitigate some of the issues we may have otherwise faced. It helped us bring everyone with us on the journey.

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