The county’s nuclear medicine service will be moved from being delivered at three hospital sites to instead be at just one – Lincoln County Hospital – in the future.
The decision was made by the board of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust after a 14-week public consultation.
Nuclear medicine is a specialist imaging technique involving the administration of radioactive substances (called radiopharmaceuticals) in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
At present, around 2,500 patients a year receive these very specialist tests at the Trust’s hospitals in Lincoln, Boston, and Grantham.
ULHT said the latest decision reflects long-running challenges around staffing, ageing equipment, and the sustainability of the service.
ULHT Chief Operating Officer Simon Evans said: “Nuclear medicine is a very specialist service that requires specialist expertise and equipment.
“We have recognised that the service is unsustainable in its current form, and the decision made as a Board will enable us to continue to provide a high quality of service to the patients of Lincolnshire.
“We believe that this decision will enable us to continue to provide an effective, robust service to patients, and should even provide us with opportunity to further expand the service and bring new treatments into Lincolnshire.”
The future of the service was subject to an extensive public consultation exercise, which ran from February 28 this year until June 6, 2022 and attracted almost 1,000 responses.
This consultation and review was undertaken due to safety and staffing issues within the service, which service leads felt was unsustainable across three sites.
At a meeting last week, the ULHT Trust Board fully considered the findings of the consultation, as well as subsequent increased staffing challenges within the service, which enabled them to make the final decision.
A full staff consultation will now be undertaken with affected staff across the service. A comprehensive implementation plan will be drawn up to make the change that has been approved and to determine the timescales involved.
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