The regulator said both Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and Kent Community Health NHS Trust had been awarded foundation status.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare provides a range of mental health, intellectual disability and community services to a population of more than 1 million people. It also runs the high-security Rampton Hospital and provides healthcare services in 13 prisons.
Kent Community Health NHS Trust is the second largest community trust in the country and the third to move to foundation status.
Miranda Carter, Monitor’s executive director of provider appraisal, said the approval of two new foundation trusts was ‘good news’ for patients, who would have a greater say in how services were run.
‘Having the ability to receive treatment outside of hospital and close to home matters to patients,’ she said.
‘It’s also important that patients get the chance to put their views across on their local healthcare, and as new foundation trusts Kent Community Health and Nottinghamshire Healthcare will be able to offer this to local patients.’
Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, said: ‘This is great news and means that foundation trusts now represent almost two thirds of all trusts in England’s NHS.
‘The FT pipeline continues to flow enabling patients to have a greater say over their health services and benefit from the cornerstones of FT status - good governance, local decision making and clear accountability.’
