Today United Lincolnshire Hospital Trust held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the future plans for Grantham & District Hospital and restoration of services lost due to Covid19 in June 2020.

Whilst some welcome progress is being made to restore inpatient and outpatient services at Grantham and District Hospital, after their removal in June 2020, some key concerns remain.

Unless further changes are planned, beyond those described in the latest report, statements that services are to be fully restored could be misleading. In particular there does not appear to be a commitment to fully restore the medical and specialist beds, nor 24/7 A&E unit. The agenda papers are available online here.

In June 2020 there were 3 medical wards with approximately 56-76 medical beds, depending on the season. The new plans will introduce new post-operative rehab unit but only restores appx 24 medical beds.

The medical wards were supported by specialist staff including respiratory, gastroenterology and cardiology. These beds are required to both provide an important local service and retain/attract key staff to Grantham & District Hospital.

Without these specialist posts and beds the future of Grantham as a District Hospital is seriously undermined. The posts are also necessary to support people admitted from A&E. Without them more acutely ill, often elderly patients with complex needs, will be forced to travel elsewhere for appropriate care.

The report enclosed is still incomplete and whilst referring to feedback from the public fails to highlight the remarkably short time frame we had to respond.

The public consultation window described as 'necessarily abbreviated' was in fact 1. 5 working days. Whilst the trust explore the impact of restoring services little reference is made to the impact of the loss of services. The fact ULHT are now considering the provision of green pathways for many of the services temporarily removed is welcome. It does however prove that a less drastic solution to a 'green site' may have been possible in June 2020. The full restoration of a 24/7 A&E remains an elusive goal despite it being lost 'temporarily' in August 2016 without a full public consultation. The temporary UTC 24/7 stop gap provided support for a majority of people with minor conditions but ambulances no longer stopped at Grantham and District Hospital and those in most need of urgent critical care, where time is of the essence, have to travel furthest. Proposals for the A&E unit remain high level and unclear. A detailed breakdown of cases handled in our A&E prior to its closure illustrate just how wide ranging the acute help available was and how skilled our A&E team were. We need confirmation all A&E services and specialists required to support them will be fully restored. Although the restoration of services identified is welcome, if these plans go ahead with significantly reduced medical beds, without our team of specialists and without our A&E fully restored we will be unable to train and recruit new staff. We will have a District hospital on the path to becoming a cottage hospital as happened in Louth. A key difference being Louth is half the distance that Grantham is from Lincoln County Hospital and next nearest A&E, and, serves a third of the population as Grantham and District Hospital.