ULHT’s ambition is to be a great Trust, to provide excellence in rural healthcare and to do this we know that we need to change. But we can’t do it on our own – we need all staff to come on this journey with us together.
Over the last few years, we have been developing our clinical strategy. This helped to shape Lincolnshire Health and Care (LHAC), which led to the sustainability and transformation plan (STP) and our 2021 strategy is the natural evolution of these. This crucial next step is our bit of the STP – therefore it’s the bit that’s most important to you.
It may appear that sometimes we have competing priorities, but our roadmap for brings all these priorities together.
We’re setting out our ambitions and over the next few weeks we hope you’ll get a better understanding of what it means for you as staff and as patients.
Why do we need a strategy? One constant in life is that the NHS is always changing and in 2017 this seems to be happening faster than ever. Keeping all our services as they are now is not an option. We know they need to change due to the huge quality and financial challenges we face as a Trust and as a county.
Many of our services don’t currently meet clinical guidelines and national standards, we have a large deficit, and we struggle to recruit many clinical staff.
Demands for services are growing due to an ageing population, many of whom have multiple long term conditions. We don’t have the funding or the staff to meet these demands – and it’s highly unlikely we will do by 2021.
Moreover, we know from others who have made great changes that all successful organisations set out a vision for the future to give their staff patients hope and a say in their destiny.
Visions for each of our hospitals
ULHT and each of our hospitals have a bright future. Our vision is for Lincoln, Pilgrim and Grantham to play a key role in delivering excellence in rural healthcare.
Right now we don’t yet have all the answers on where every service will be located, but what we do have is a vision of what role we’d like each hospital to play in making ULHT great for the people of Lincolnshire.
Lincoln hospital will provide emergency medical and surgical services across the board, including specialised “once in lifetime” services such as hyper acute stroke, cardiology, vascular surgery as well as specialised rehabilitation medicine.
Pilgrim hospital will provide emergency medical and surgical services, but will also become a centre of excellence for complex elective surgery.
Grantham hospital will provide care for a range of clinical conditions, and become the centre of excellence for breast care services, and non-complex planned surgery.
We expect that a range of ambulatory services, predominantly outpatient services, will also be provided at locations around the county including at community.
Please let us know your views by emailing [email protected], going to the staff intranet or sharing on @ULHT_News or Facebook,