United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust is today launching a 12 week public consultation into the future of its nuclear medicine service.
Nuclear medicine is a specialist imaging technique involving the administration of radioactive substances (called radiopharmaceuticals) in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
There are over 20 different tests that nuclear medicine can perform and they look at conditions as diverse as Parkinson’s disease to delayed gastric emptying. In United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) hospitals, the most common tests performed are bone scans and heart scans.
The service is currently provided from three hospitals in Lincolnshire: Lincoln County Hospital, Grantham and District Hospital and Pilgrim Hospital, Boston. The service sees around 2,500 patients per year for very specialist tests.
The service has long faced challenges around staffing, aging equipment and sustainability, and therefore it has been deemed unsustainable in its current format.
Today, a consultation is being launched on identified options to reduce the number of hospital sites that the service could be delivered from in future. These options have been developed by hospital clinicians, and shaped by patient representatives.
The options are:
• Option 1: Centralisation of the service at Lincoln
• Option 2: Centralisation of the service at two sites – Lincoln and Pilgrim
Head of Nuclear Medicine for ULHT, Laura White, said: “Our nuclear medicine service is a very specialist offering that requires highly skilled technicians and scientists to carry out testing for patients.
“At the moment our resources are spread very thinly across the county, which makes the service both inefficient and also introduces a high risk of appointment cancellations for patients.
“Whilst we know that centralising our service at one or two hospital sites rather than three may mean that some patients have to travel further for their tests, we believe this is the best option to ensure a sustainable and efficient service for the future.
“We also believe that better use of our resources will mean that we can invest in and explore more nuclear medicine treatments in Lincolnshire in future. Which should mean more patients can be treated in Lincolnshire rather than having to travel outside of the county for some tests”
The public consultation launches today (Monday 28 February 2022) and will run until Monday 23 May 2022.
Staff, patients and the public of Lincolnshire are invited to give their views as part of this consultation, ahead of a decision being made about the future of the service later this year.
To take part, please see the consultation web page.
Feedback can also be provided in the following ways:
- Fill in our survey
- Come along to one of our virtual consultation events on Microsoft Teams, details below:
o Tuesday 8 March- 6.30pm-7.30pm
o Monday 28 March- 3pm-4pm
o Wednesday 13 April- 6.30pm-7.30pm
o Tuesday 3 May- 3pm-4pm - Invite us to one of your meetings to discuss the service, by emailing [email protected]