Covid: Military called in to help Lincolnshire hospitals

A hospital trust is bringing in military personnel to help it deal with "high demand" and staffing problems caused by Covid-19.

United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT) declared a "major incident" on Tuesday with some surgery and outpatient appointments cancelled.

That has now been downgraded to a "critical incident".

Trust chief executive Andrew Morgan said about 20 military medics would start work on Thursday.

Mr Morgan said another 10 armed forces personnel would start later as "health care support workers" at its hospitals in Lincoln and Grantham.

"It will really help us to look after people on the wards, look after people in the emergency department and just try and get those shifts back up to the levels that we would like to see the staffing at," he said.

Mr Morgan said about 10% of staff were absent, "twice what we would normally expect", with with just over 300 off work for Covid-related reasons.

"Significant staffing issues and what also adds to that is the relatively short notice we get sometimes that people are off sick, particularly those with Covid," he said.

"That creates a very short term problem for us about how we fill that shift they were due to be on."

The major incident, the highest level of restriction, was declared after pressure on the trust's two hospitals was made worse by a water supply issue at Grantham Hospital which caused some surgery and outpatient appointments to be cancelled.

Mr Morgan apologised to patients who had missed appointments and said that from Thursday "we hope to be operating at near normal", adding that emergency and essential services remained open.

One woman who found out her appointment had been cancelled when she arrived at Lincoln County Hospital said she was "annoyed".

"I've travelled 40 miles and wasn't told anything last night," she said.

Dean Odell from Healthwatch Lincolnshire, which monitors health services on behalf of patients, said the organisation was becoming "increasingly concerned about the pressure on hospital services", but added that the trust was "stuck between a rock and a hard place".

"Patients are rightfully concerned about delays to their appointments and they are worried about the long-term effect this might have on their condition and their wider health and wellbeing," he said.

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