Chief Executive and Chair’s Foreword

We are pleased to share with you our Annual Report and Accounts for the year 2023/24.

This report covers a year in which the NHS both locally and nationally has been under pressure, but where we have also shown real signs of improvement through the hard work of our staff and embracing innovation.

We are proud of colleagues across the Trust, who have worked so hard to help us to continue to recover from the last few challenging years, improving efficiency in our services and working with partners to improve discharge processes into the community. We have also worked collectively across our healthcare system to improve our performance around urgent and emergency care, for the benefit of our patients.

We have seen some positive developments during the year, including a £3.5m investment into John Coupland Hospital and a successful bid for the Greater Lincolnshire Sexual Health Services. We have also seen excellent performance in some of our services, with 92.3% of patients in our urgent treatment centres (UTC) being seen and treated within 4 hours, and the initial triage performance within our UTCs significantly outperforming the national average.

In collaboration with ULHT, we also addressed the flow of patients out of the acute setting back into the community after having a stroke and achieved our forecasted financial delivery of a £1.38m surplus position.

In addition, we have continued to experience a good culture at LCHS, with results from the National Staff Survey showing an overall positive picture for the Trust, despite the challenges posed by organisational change. We are proud to have achieved several awards, including our selective mutism team winning the Giving Voice Award at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy Awards, and the organisation being recognised as veterans aware by the Veterans Covenant Healthcare Alliance.

This year has also been a huge turning point for our organisation and how we work with partners, as agreement was reached that we would move towards a Group arrangement with United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust from Monday 1 April 2024.

This reflects the huge amount of positive progress that we have made over the last year in working together with partners, to improve the care that we provide to our patients in Lincolnshire.

We are so proud to lead this organisation, which is really making a difference for the people of Lincolnshire. Thank you to our colleagues for everything they do to continue to provide safe and compassionate care for our patients and their communities.

Elaine Baylis, Chair

Andrew Morgan, Chief Executive