Community Healthcare Services

We deliver a diverse portfolio of community healthcare services, ensuring patients receive care close to home and often avoiding the need to be admitted to an acute hospital including:

  • Community nursing, a core and essential service provided by LCHS for the people of Lincolnshire, providing support to people with long term conditions, frailty, and those at the end of life. They work closely with a range of professionals from other agencies including Primary Care Networks as part of Neighbourhood Teams, providing integrated care for patients to meet local needs closer to home.
  • Specialist nursing services including respiratory and pulmonary rehab, diabetes, bladder and bowel, skin integrity, lymphoedema, heart failure, cardiac rehab, Parkinson’s, TB and Electronic assistive technology service (EATS).
  • Palliative and end of life services including the palliative single point of access.
  • Four community hospitals in Louth, Skegness, Gainsborough and Spalding providing services including inpatient rehab, palliative care, theatre services and outpatient clinics as well as nursing services to Butterfly Hospice in Boston.
  • Integrated urgent and emergency care services including our award-winning Clinical Assessment Service (CAS), Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) at Boston, Gainsborough, Louth, Lincoln, Skegness, and Spalding, and out of hours services at Grantham and Stamford. We have added a number of new services since 2022 including Urgent Community Response, Discharge to Assess, and Virtual Wards in frailty, cardiology and respiratory. LCHS has on average double the attendances of ULHT’s type 1 attendances (including Out of Hours services and CAS).
  • Transitional care reablement services to bridge the gap between hospital and home and to maximise recovery and promote independence in partnership with providers including Age UK.
  • Adult therapy services including musculoskeletal (MSK) physiotherapy, adult speech and language therapy, community stroke services, community physio and occupational therapy and podiatry service.
  • Integrated sexual health and contraceptive health, rated outstanding by our commissioner.
  • Children’s and young people’s services including immunisation and vaccination services, children’s therapy services, and children in care (previously known as looked after children)
  • Our Operations Centre was opened in December 2016 and provides a 24/7 multi-disciplinary team for LCHS
  • Safeguarding services for both children and adults.

LCHS has an annual income of c. £133.9m. The services we deliver are commissioned by organisations including NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) and NHS England (NHSE). We pride ourselves on our effective use of resources and again delivered a surplus in 2022/23. LCHS is rated NOF 1 by NHSE. The Trust’s 2021/22 National Cost Collection Index (NCCI) score of 94 represents a £5.8M saving for the Lincolnshire system compared to national average costs and our NHSE Corporate Benchmarking for 2021/22 is the 5th most efficient of the 15 Community Trusts, representing a £1.23M saving for the Lincolnshire system.