To our patients in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland
You will hopefully have seen that the local NHS has launched a consultation asking for your views about proposals to spend £450 million to improve acute and maternity services in our hospitals. Every day you put your health in our hands. Now, the power to make this investment a reality is in your hands. We are writing to ask for your help by spending a small amount of time completing a questionnaire.
We are fortunate that we have been given the once in a lifetime opportunity to invest in our local hospitals. It’s important we don’t waste this chance and we get the most value out of every pound. We need you to tell us what you think of our proposals, so our future plans are based on the widest possible range of points of view and circumstances. You have a real opportunity to help us get this right, to improve services for everyone in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
We are just some of the clinicians that have helped to create the proposals. We do what we do because we care about your health and your family’s health. Ensuring you get the best possible care is at the heart of the decisions we make and of these proposals. We believe the changes we are proposing will improve our services for you, not just now but for many years to come.
By adding new and refurbished buildings we would be able to locate the right services together across the three hospital sites and allocate staff in a better way to keep services running smoothly. In doing that, we would be able to treat more patients, reduce waiting times for treatment and improve travel and parking.
By carrying out all planned procedures in a completely separate building to emergency care, operations and procedures would still be able to go ahead when the emergency services are busy. Our proposals would mean more than 100,000 day case procedures and 600,000 follow-up appointments would now take place on the Glenfield site instead of Leicester Royal, making access and parking much easier.
Currently, children’s services are spread across our hospital sites. We are proposing to create a standalone dedicated Children’s Hospital at the Leicester Royal Infirmary to bring all these services together and create a much more welcoming and reassuring environment for children and young people alike.
A new maternity hospital at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, supported by an expanded team of community midwives, would give mums-to-be increased choice in how they give birth, in an equitable way wherever you live in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. This would mean relocating the under-used midwife-led unit in Melton Mowbray to the General Hospital, where it would be accessible to more women wanting a home-birth style of delivery, closer to emergency assistance.
The General Hospital would continue to be really important for patient care, even though it would no longer be an acute site. Space would be freed up to allow us to expand community care provision, including the diabetes centre of excellence, an urgent treatment centre and a dedicated hub for patients to receive GP-requested diagnostic tests. Some of the land there would be sold to create much needed key worker housing. During this consultation, you have the opportunity to help us decide what services could be available.
The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed that these proposals are the right ones. Had these changes already been made, we would have had the capacity we needed and have been better able to staff our services so planned operations would not have needed to be cancelled.
We cannot stress enough how important it is to complete the questionnaire. We strongly believe we have created proposals which would help us deliver even better care for you and your family but we need you to tell us if you agree.You will find the details about how to do that below.
Thank you for your support.
Andrew Furlong: Medical Director and Consultant Children’s Orthopaedic Surgeon
John Jameson: Consultant Colorectal Surgeon & Deputy Medical Director
Ian Scudamore: Consultant Obstetrician & Clinical Director Women’s and Children’s Services
Hazel Busby-Earle: Consultant Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon & Clinical Director, Musculoskeletal and Specialist Surgery
Rachel Marsh: Stroke Consultant and Clinical Director, Emergency and Specialist Medicine
Giuseppe Garcea: Consultant HPB Surgeon & Clinical Director Cancer, Haematology, Urology, Gastroenterology and General Surgery
Suzanne Khalid: Clinical Director, Renal, Respiratory and Cardiovascular
Christopher Allsager: Consultant Anaesthetist & Clinical Director, Critical Care, Theatres, Anaesthetics, Pain and Sleep
Prashanth Patel: Consultant Chemical Pathologist/Metabolic Physician & Clinical Director, Clinical Support and Imaging
