Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the adequacy of access to spinal services for patients in Boston and Skegness constituency; and what steps he is taking to ensure that residents can access (a) timely and (b) geographically appropriate spinal care.

The local acute trust in Lincolnshire, United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (ULTH), does not have a spinal service. Emergency services take non-complex patients with potential spinal issues to the closest accident and emergency within Lincolnshire to be treated or stabilised, but if the patient is assessed at scene as having a spinal injury they will be transported directly to the Tertiary Centre at Nottingham University Hospital (NUH). NUH also provides a spinal consultant who supports ULTH on a weekly basis.

General practitioners in the Skegness and Boston area can refer patients to a local spinal assessment service which completes a full assessment of the patient’s condition with appropriate diagnostics. There are then two pathways for spinal services based on clinical need. Non-complex patients will be offered choice of local acute services and complex patients are offered a choice of the tertiary centres at NUH & Sheffield.

NHS England’s Midlands Regional Team has developed and implemented a network model of care for spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. Specialist clinicians in SCI provide acute care, intervention and training including outreach to local hospitals for patients who need SCI rehabilitation whilst they are waiting for a bed at a specialist SCI centre. SCI rehabilitation for Lincolnshire patients is primarily delivered via the specialist SCI centre in Sheffield. For Lincolnshire, NHS England has recognised that there is a significant clinical gap in these patients being managed locally whilst waiting for a specialist SCI rehabilitation bed. NHS England has allocated funding as part of the Network Model of Care for a post to be based at Lincoln Country Hospital to provide specialist support for Lincolnshire residents. Currently, this post is vacant, but NHS England and the trust are working towards successful recruitment.