Just how worried should we be about the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust and the care and service it provides?
Towards the end of January ULHT was found to be overspent on it's budget by £14 million. That money needed to be found from the next year's budget. This was blogged by myself and can be read further down this site.
In August of 2010 the Care Quality Commission, the body responsible for ensuring high quality of care within the NHS, produced a report detailing failings within ULHT. This can be viewed by following this link:
http://www.cqc.org.uk/newsandevents/newsstories.cfm?FaArea1=customwidgets.content_view_1&cit_id=36570
Today, as reported on local TV Look North, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-12626000, the CQC has made a spot check visit to Pilgrim Hospital and found that care there is still not up to standard. As a result, the Trust has until 31 May to make its improvements to avoid possible prosecution or closure of services.
ULHT runs Pilgrim, Lincoln and Grantham hospitals, all establishments that people from Skegness and the surrounding area rely on for their hospital care. Given the reports of the over-spending and under-delivery of proper care and services, I think those that are responsible for the running of the Trust need to look to their laurels and get their organisation sorted out, and be extremely quick about it.
In a rural county such as Lincolnshire it is difficult enough to just get to hospital. Surely when patients do make the necessarily long and sometimes difficult journey to get there, they should expect a decent level of care? In addition, given the necessity to balance the budget because of the overspend it is going to be more difficult for the Trust to provide the required level of care!
Should we be worried? I think that probably we should!
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