NHS Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has today begun a formal consultation exercise on the future of four local hospital services. This 12 week public consultation is our biggest public consultation to date and will enable people from across the county to have their say on how these services might be delivered in the future.
The services being consulted on are:
· Orthopaedics (elective and non-elective) countywide
· Stroke services countywide
· Urgent and emergency care at Grantham hospital
· Acute medicine at Grantham hospital
As part of this consultation, we will be sharing extensive information on the above services, how they operate now, the challenges faced and our proposals for how they could be improved for the population of Lincolnshire.
We want to engage and involve you in this conversation –helping us to shape what the future of these services look like together.
John Turner, Chief Executive of NHS Lincolnshire CCG said: “It is no secret that the NHS in Lincolnshire has a number of long terms issues to resolve, and I know that our staff and patients have waited for some time to hear our proposals around the future of some of these services, and for the opportunity to influence what happens.
“Through our Healthy Conversation engagement exercise in 2019, we heard that the people of Lincolnshire want high quality services, delivered in local communities, and that we need to preserve our hospital services for those who really need it.
“This public consultation exercise is the next step in this listening exercise, where we can for the first time reveal the full background of our thinking, the challenges that we face and the recommendations which we believe will best serve our population.
“I want to encourage as many people as possible to participate in this consultation, and give us your open and honest opinions via the consultation questionnaire so that we can work together to shape the future of these hospital services.”
Dr Dave Baker, GP and Clinical Lead at the CCG said: “Expert clinicians from across our local NHS have worked extremely hard over the past few years to develop the proposals in this consultation, prioritising what is safest and best for our patients within the constraints that we have.
“We know that some of our services cannot stay as they are, because they don’t always meet safety standards or performance targets, they are inefficient or we struggle to staff them sufficiently.
“We all now need to embrace the idea of changing and modernising to bring about better outcomes for our patients and better services, that are safely staffed and high performing.
“I know that members of our communities will have questions and feedback about some of the changes being discussed as part of this consultation, and I’d encourage everyone to get involved in a conversation about this, so that we can take that feedback into account when planning these services for the future.”
The intention is to give everyone across the county the opportunity to have their say. Anyone wanting to take part will be invited to complete a questionnaire to help us gather people’s feedback on the plans. Alongside this, will be a range of other ways to get involved including public meetings, virtual meetings, marketplace meet-ups and website events. In addition, our website and social media pages will be sharing the latest information on the topics above and links to our questionnaire.
We are particularly keen to hear from seldom heard groups and those who are economically disadvantaged and will be working closely with our engagement teams and members of the voluntary sector to ensure as many people as possible are given a voice.
We will continue to share information through our hospital sites, GP practices, and other venues to ensure you remain fully up-to-date throughout the consultation.
Full details of all the ways to get involved can be found on the Lincolnshire NHS website here: https://www.lincolnshire.nhs.uk
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