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Nuclear medicine services to be removed from Grantham and District Hospital




Nuclear medicine at Grantham and District Hospital will be moved to another site following a 14-week-consultation on the future of the service.

The Trust Board of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust has made the decision to run Lincolnshire's nuclear medicine service from one site instead of three.

This service will now only be run at Lincoln County Hospital instead of Grantham and District Hospital and Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, as at present 2,500 patients a year receive these very specialist tests at these hospitals.

Grantham and District Hospital. Credit: LDR (58681449)
Grantham and District Hospital. Credit: LDR (58681449)

The trust says its 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."

Nuclear medicine is a specialist imaging technique involving the administration of radioactive substances (called radiopharmaceuticals) in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

The future of the service was subject to an extensive public consultation exercise, which ran from February 28, 2022 to June 6, 2022 and attracted almost 1,000 responses.

The consultation and review was undertaken due to safety and staffing issues within the service, which service leads felt was unsustainable across three sites, and which would provide greater benefits to patients and resilience if delivered from just one site.

To see the full details on the service, the public consultation findings and the considerations taken, see the public trust board paper.

A full staff consultation will now be undertaken with affected staff across the service, and a comprehensive implementation plan drawn up to make the change that has been approved and to determine the timescales involved.



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