Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust have merged to become the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

The integration has been formally approved by both trust’s boards, NHS Improvement and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

More than 500 staff and members of the public were involved in the development of the name, the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and it was chosen because it reflects the geographical span, heritage and aspirations of the merged trust.

Over the next two-three years, teams will be working together to merge their corporate and clinical services to serve the new trust’s combined population.

Suzanne Tracey, Chief Executive Officer of the merged organisation, said: “This is the final milestone in bringing together NDHT and the RD&E. We’ve been partners for a really long time, and as we’ve worked even more closely together over the past four years, we’ve seen what we can achieve together.

“Formally bringing our organisations together unlocks opportunities to improve the resilience and sustainability of the healthcare we deliver to our patients across all of the areas we serve, from North, to Mid, to East Devon. We have really strong ambitions for what we can achieve together and from July, we will have a common electronic patient record which will help us to modernise how we offer care to our patients for the future.”