Lincolnshire health chiefs have £5m to spend in two weeks to improve acute services

Lincolnshire’s health chiefs will have to decide how they are going to spend a near £5 million pot of money by the middle of December if they want help to improve flow through acute services.
NHSNHS
NHS

The Secretary of State for Health announced last week that Lincolnshire County Council would get £2.8million and Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board would get £2.1million from a £500 million discharge fund.

LCC’s Executive Director for Adult Care and Community Wellbeing told a council scrutiny committee on Wednesday the cash would help protect the county’s services.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“The main effort is to help the social care providers in Lincolnshire be as resilient as possible, to maintain existing capacity and, where possible, expand it,” he said.

However, he added that both pots of money would need to be spent by next April.

Bosses want county scrutiny committees to sign off on the plans by December 6 before a final submission on December 16, however, it’s unclear when the money will arrive.

“There’s no clarity as to when we will be told whether our plan and spend profile is going to be approved, but the expectation is that we will start to report on the benefits of that investment on December 30 – so for a number of colleagues, there’s no Christmas break, I’m afraid,” said Mr Garrod.

“This has to be spent very quickly,” he added.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Lincolnshire County Council’s Adult and Community Wellbeing Committee will receive a full report on acute flow in the county in February.

Launching the fund last week, the Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said: “It is vital that those areas with the biggest challenges are seeing the most funding to help speed up the discharge of patients from hospital.”

However, he warned that if the funds are not used well a second batch of funding in January may be withheld.