Hospitals in the county get £12m to fund upgrades

United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust is one of 39 trusts across the Midlands to share £131 million to help reduce waiting times for patients that have increased due to the pandemic, by expanding the number of operating theatres and beds, including new day surgery units to prevent people staying overnight and investment in technology to improve their experiences of care and help them manage their conditions.

Director of finance and digital for ULHT, Paul Matthew, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded over £12million to invest in expanding and improving our hospitals as well as upgrading our digital capability for the benefit of our patients and staff.

“The investment will be made up of £5 million for two new laminar flow theatres at Grantham hospital, £3.3m to refurbish and expand our critical surgical wards at Boston and Grantham hospital and £1.1 million towards the replacement of our digital cardiology system. This will replace some of our existing paper systems and ensure our clinical colleagues have immediate access to the information they need.

“We will also invest £2.5m in an artificial intelligence solution to support triage and management of our patient waiting list, and £600,000 for a digital solution to support our MSK pathway.

“On top of this, our healthcare system in Lincolnshire has been granted additional funds to establish a new Citizen Atrium, which will help us to work better with our patients to understand how they access support and guidance. We are now working up our plans for these developments and proposed timescales.”

Funding will partly come from the new Health and Social Care levy starting in April.