About the Trust

Introduction

Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was established as a combined hospital and community Trust on 1st April 2001 and achieved Foundation Status on 1st May 2007. It was formed by the merger of North East Lincolnshire NHS Trust and Scunthorpe and Goole Hospitals NHS Trust and operates all NHS hospitals in Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Goole. Its name reflects the wider geographical area in which the Trust is a major provider of health care.

The Trust works in partnership with the Hull York Medical School and Sheffield Medical School providing comprehensive undergraduate teaching for Year 3, 4 and 5 medical students.

Running three hospitals, separated by considerable distances, poses a significant service delivery challenge, but also allows the Trust to serve a wider population. NLAG also provides a range of services delivered outside of hospital settings.

Our core business can be defined as:

• Delivering a full range of emergency secondary health care services, including intensive and high dependency care
• Maintaining a comprehensive range of planned services, in an environment of patient choice and contestability
• Ensuring a full range of secondary care diagnostic services are available locally

Key Facts

Further information

The Trust has developed, through extensive consultation with the local health community, a 5-year Strategic Direction. This describes the Trust’s key strategic priorities for the next five years and beyond, to support the healthcare requirements of the local population. Our primary strategy is “Local Services for Local People” - to be the provider of choice for the local health community. This is in line with the strategic vision of local Commissioners:

• Broadly comprehensive District General Hospitals in Grimsby and Scunthorpe, supported from Goole
• Rationalisation, reconfiguration and consolidation managed in a collaborative way
• Joint development of modernisation initiatives across the health community

Our business strategy is to protect our current position as the dominant provider of secondary care to the local population, and continue to develop effective collaborative relationships across the health community. Our business plan is not built on continued expansion of staff or facilities. We are instead committed to delivering greater output through productivity improvements, as our secondary care services modernise through investment and integrated working with Primary Care.

We do expect to see modest increases in activity over the next 5 years. Our activity modelling is based on the following assumptions:

• Underlying demand growth consistent with national projections
• Demand reduction due to local diversion and demand management strategies
• Non-recurrent activity requirements to deliver the 18-week waiting list
• Some loss of activity to local Independent Sector (IS) providers under PatientChoice
• Development of specific services for Louth and down the East Coast
• Consolidating workloads and key services at Goole

Our business plan therefore is based around consolidating current demand and existing provision for services.

In line with activity projections, NLAG must control costs and deliver services within tariff income levels. The Trust is already:

• Operating a deliverable Cost Improvement Programme
• Taking action on services currently spending more than tariff income levels
• Improving productivity in key areas such as theatres and endoscopy
• Pursuing modernisation of workforce roles and skill mix
• Delivering efficiency savings through support service rationalisation and shared services