Tuesday 1 July 2025
Dear colleague
Welcome to Updates from Group Board for the Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group (LCHG). This Group is made up of Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS) and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (ULTH).
The Group Board operates as the joint board and decision-making body for both statutory organisations and this update is designed to inform colleagues and stakeholders of the discussion and decisions being taken at both the Group and individual Trust level.
We held our most recent Group Board meeting on Tuesday 1 July 2025, which was open for members of the public to join virtually. The full Board meeting papers can be found on the Trust Board papers page on the website.
Patient story: The Board heard from Tanita Middleton, who bravely shared her story about the death of her nine-day-old baby Amelia Rose at Lincoln County Hospital. Tanita spoke about the fantastic work that she has done as a result of her experience to help others who lose loved ones in Lincolnshire’s hospitals.
She shared how she felt during the experience with Amelia Rose, who she had to sadly say goodbye to in a busy resuscitation department. Afterwards, she worked with the hospital to develop family rooms in Emergency Departments, providing an improved environment for bereaved relatives to digest difficult news, spend some time and say goodbye to loved ones. Her ideas and feedback resulted in two new purpose-built family rooms in the Emergency Departments at Lincoln County Hospital and Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, which are well used and equipped with seating, lighting and facilities to make families feel comfortable. The story can be viewed on YouTube here.
Celebrating Group success – Ward accreditation- Theatres at County Hospital, Louth were celebrated in the Diamond Quality Accreditation Scheme with a Bronze Award. This recognises wards and departments that demonstrate consistently high standards of patient care and evidence of their improvement journey, measured through a variety of metrics.
Theatre Service Manager Alan Greef talked through the steps they have taken to deliver safer, more efficient and more patient-centred care in Theatres at Louth. This included changing their process to ensure patient safety during ophthalmology procedures and a huge piece of work to improve patient flow during cataract surgery, which meant that they can now see nearly double the number of patients on each cataract surgery list.
Importantly, the presentation also described action and improvements that the team have made to improve patient experience of contacting them on the phone, as this is an area of frustration for patients. Additionally, a huge amount of work that has gone into improving staff culture and wellbeing in the team, which is key to improved patient and staff experience.
Celebrating Group success – Rheumatology – The Board received an inspiring presentation by the Rheumatology team at ULTH, which detailed the innovative work they have done to set up a biologic therapies homecare service, for those patients who need high-cost biologic drugs. The service offers support for these patients in their own home, working with homecare providers to ensure patients receive the treatment they need, managing the medication each patient receives so that it works for them, as well as tracking and monitoring them in their own home. In addition, the team offers personalised support to patients, and keeps the service running, including funding, manging changes to treatment, offering advice and shaping departmental guidelines.
Good news stories:
· The first phase of the Emergency Department at Pilgrim Hospital, Boston opened to patients on Wednesday 7 May, which marked a significant milestone in the provision of urgent and emergency care for the county. The work has been completed following £21.3m funding announced during a visit by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in August 2019. Additional funding to complete the transformation will come from the Lincolnshire NHS System and the expected final cost will be approximately £45m. Work will now focus on transforming the existing department and to join both phases together in 2026.
· Pilgrim Hospital, Boston has also recently been awarded £23m in funding through the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. This investment will be used to implement a series of energy infrastructure improvements aimed at reducing the hospital’s dependence on fossil fuels and enhancing the resilience of its critical systems. The planned upgrades will contribute significantly to the hospital’s sustainability goals and long-term operational efficiency. The scheme is being delivered by Salix on behalf of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
· The Full Business Case for the ULTH Electronic Patient Record (EPR) programme received Cabinet approval in May 2025. With this milestone achieved, the Trust now enters the planning phase of the project, in preparation for implementation commencing in September 2025.
· In January 2024 ULTH were invited to lead a pilot study into the prevalence of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) in breast cancer patients across Lincolnshire, as part of the East Midlands Cancer Alliance. As part of the pilot, screening tools were integrated into the breast cancer pathway to identify patients at higher risk of OSA. The team were recently invited to present their findings at the House of Lords during an all-party parliamentary group on OSA. The team will continue with their work to ensure there are better outcomes for patients living with OSA.
· On Wednesday 14 May, a number of Group colleagues were invited to attend the Education and Skills Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, in recognition of the Lincolnshire Talent Academy’s outstanding contribution in the field of education and skills development. Established in 2015, the talent academy was created to bring together health and care organisations from across the county with a shared commitment to develop a strong, skilled and suitable workforce. Over the past 10 years the academy has engaged with over 137,000 young people, delivered more than 5,700 work experience placements and supported more than 1,000 colleagues into apprenticeships.
· We continue to demonstrate the strength of collaborative working across the Lincolnshire health and care system to deliver person-centred integrated care. Lancaster Ward at Lincoln County Hospital was recently transformed to provide step-down intermediate, time-limited care. Now operating as a community rehabilitation and reablement ward in an acute setting, Lancaster Ward supports patients in their recovery before they transition to the next stage of their care journey.
Maternity Incentive Scheme:. On Tuesday 1 April, following information presented to the NHS Resolution Collaborate Advisory Group, ULTH received formal confirmation of achieving full compliance with year six of the Maternity Incentive Scheme (MIS). This demonstrates significant work undertaken by the maternity and corporate teams to provide assurance around the quality and safety of maternity services in Lincolnshire. This achievement means that the Trust will be entitled to receive the full MIS rebate, and the funds will be used to support maternity and neonatal safety whilst continuing to improve services.
ULTH and LCHS Quality Accounts 2024/25: The Board received the Quality Accounts for both ULTH and LCHS. These documents outline the work that has been completed during the last financial year, with a focus on improving the quality of care that is provided to patients. These Quality Accounts demonstrate the good work of both organisations, and include comments from partner organisations, which have acknowledged the work that has taken place in on some areas and identified other areas of focus into next year.
National Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Plan 2025/26: The Board received the national plan which was released a few weeks ago. This sets out a roadmap for rapid and sustained improvement in urgent and emergency care, focusing on the changes that will make the biggest difference to patients and staff. The plan introduces ambitious targets to significantly improve services this winter, focusing on reducing hospital stays, improving patient flow and enhancing ambulance response times. Across Lincolnshire we are now working to develop local plans as a healthcare system, which include a number of high priority actions. These will be tested and implemented prior to winter.
Emergency Planning Resilience and Response (EPRR) Annual Reports for ULTH and LCHS: The Board considered EPRR Annual Reports for both organisations, which report on compliance against a range of core standards around emergency preparedness.
The LCHS report showed good compliance, and detailed significant improvements made over the last 12 months, including around training compliance, participation in exercises and testing and updates to key plans and policies. Further work was identified around business continuity plans (BCPs) and staff training to ensure full compliance in future.
The ULTH report also showed good levels of compliance, with improvement shown around Major Incident training and exercises, including evidence of successfully managing of a number of internal incidents during the course of the year. Further work is needed around counter-measure plans, lockdown procedures and staff training.
Supporting our staff:
· Throughout May and June 2025, a series of staff engagement roadshows have taken place across the Group involving the Group Leadership Team, providing colleagues with the opportunity to discuss the Group’s values, vision and strategy. The key themes from the roadshows include culture, communication, inclusivity and group identity. These insights will inform the development of ‘Our values in action’ which is the behavioural framework to bring the Group values to life. This framework will support a consistent and values led culture across all teams and services. This will now be developed into further staff engagement exercises to ensure that colleagues continue to be a central part of the development of the Group.
· As part of Volunteers Week in June, the Group proudly celebrated and recognised the invaluable contributions of its dedicated volunteers. The Group currently has 329 volunteers who generously contributed 46,069 hours of their time over the last financial year to support our work. Their compassion, time, and commitment play a vital role in enhancing patient care and supporting staff.
Finance: At month 2, ULTH’s year to date financial position is a £7.1million deficit, in line with plan. LCHS’s year to date financial position is a £1million deficit, £0.1million favourable to plan.
The ULTH Cost Improvement Programme (CIP) year to date has delivered savings of £5.3million, which is in line with plan. LCHS CIP year to date has delivered £0.7million in savings, which is £0.2million favourable to plan.
As part of the CIP work, a number of service transformation projects are underway, as well as work to ensure that workforce spend is controlled, with a particular focus on limiting spend on temporary workforce and vacancy control.
If you have any feedback on the discussions at the Group board, please contact [email protected].
Kind regards
Elaine Baylis
Group Chair
Karen Dunderdale
Group Chief Executive