COLUMN: Ten years of community health achievements

Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS) has been operating for 10 years this year, so I’d like to share with you some of our achievements to celebrate our 10th anniversary.

As a bit of background, in Lincolnshire, the Primary Care Trust (PCT) was commissioning and providing services and was therefore encouraged to divest their community services, and LCHS became a separate organisation from NHS Lincolnshire PCT in 2011.

I joined the trust a few years later, in 2013, as an executive director so I have seen the organisation evolve and flourish.

Here are a few examples of what we have achieved over that time:

* In 2015, LCHS was listed in the Health Service Journal and Nursing Times as one of the top 100 places to work.

* In 2018, we were assessed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of health and social care in England and rated outstanding.

* LCHS has an award-winning Children’s Rapid Response Respiratory Service. This new service began in 2019 as a pilot to provide specialist physiotherapists to help children living with complex disabilities to stay at home with their families and avoid hospital admissions.

* The service prevented 64 hospital admissions in its first year, along with numerous associated healthcare appointments, saving a conservative estimate of £239,000 by providing care at home.

* In 2019, the team won The Clinical Team of the Year award at the Lincolnshire Live Healthcare Awards and in 2020 they achieved national recognition, after receiving The Council of Allied Health Professions Research (CAHPR) Award for Evaluating Health and Social Care Practice at the Advancing Healthcare Awards.

* This year, the team were finalists in the Paediatric Care Initiative of the Year in the Health Service Journal Value Awards.  

* Since 2019, we have been working with our NHS colleagues to develop and improve the urgent care facilities we provide in Lincolnshire. This has included upgrading from minor injury units to Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) in some areas such as Spalding. We now have UTCs in Lincoln, Louth, Skegness, Boston, Spalding and Gainsborough.

* And in 2020 our results from the National NHS Staff Survey showed top scores for community trusts for the health and wellbeing services we offer our staff, our staff engagement pathways and for the quality of care we provide to patients.

LCHS really is an innovative organisation characterised by passion and enthusiasm and we pride ourselves in delivering great care, close to home.

If, after reading this, you’d like to learn more about LCHS or are interested in working for us, please visit our website at www.lincolnshirecommunityhealthservices.nhs.uk for further information.