If patients need more specialist care, why doesn’t the Trust just recruit specialist doctors to all of its hospitals?
A. Specialists need to work in teams so that the full range of services is available to patients in an emergency. They also need to cover a large enough population to make sure they see enough patients to keep up their skills. This is called ‘critical mass’. None of the Trust’s hospitals is big enough to provide this ‘critical mass’ on its own.
