Case for Change (published July 2021)

Section 4: Our ambition

The New Hospitals Programme (NHP) offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our hospitals and the services we provide for local people by 2030. Our ambition is to make Lancashire and South Cumbria a world-leading centre of excellence for hospital care.

The Government has provided us with an opportunity for significant capital investment. This presents us with the potential to do something amazing. We want to build on what we are already great at, while developing new, cutting-edge hospital facilities that take advantage of emerging digital technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics to offer the absolute best in modern healthcare.

Government funding has been granted to address significant issues with our ageing hospitals in Preston and Lancaster. These buildings were designed for a different time and cannot accommodate today’s more complex patient needs or new technologies. As well as replacing these buildings with new facilities, our proposals will be more far-reaching.

We want to create a new digitally linked network of brand new and refurbished facilities covering our entire region and making Lancashire and South Cumbria a renowned centre of excellence for hospital care. Our hospitals will work together to deliver highly specialised services to local people, ensuring patients can access pioneering treatment either in person or using digital technology and providing joined up, truly excellent care.

Many people rely on our hospitals and other services to work as a team to overcome the health challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. We will give people of all ages and communities equal access to the best possible hospital facilities. We will bring mental and physical health closer together. We will help local people in our region live longer, healthier lives.

We want to expand the range of medical procedures and therapies available closer to home, bringing new highly specialised services, currently only available to patients who travel out of the area, into our region.

Our region is large and complex with widespread health inequalities. We have 1.8 million people living in cities with diverse cultures and communities, rural areas and coastal towns.

We will offer outstanding hospital services, including cancer and trauma care that patients and staff know are world leading. These will be delivered in purpose-built spaces that employ the latest ground-breaking technology and research, attracting the best clinical minds to work and study in our region.

We will also look at the experience that patients, families and carers have when they visit our hospitals. We want to offer privacy and dignity through more private rooms and create the space for our staff to care for patients in the way they would like.

The positive impact of this work will reach further than new hospitals. It will deliver sustained economic benefit to a region with significant socioeconomic challenges, attracting investment and jobs. It is also a key element of delivering our local NHS’s vision of offering patients complex care closer to home, improving community health and wellbeing services and the overall experience for local people.

We do not yet know what our new hospital facilities will look like or where they will be located. Our proposals will be led by the needs of our patients, staff and local people. We will be guided by clinical opinion, experience, robust scientific evidence and data, along with the power of feedback, ideas and the imagination of our local communities.

Hospitals have the power to transform our region. We want to use this opportunity to achieve just that, working together to help local people live longer, healthier lives.