Luton and Dunstable Hospital staff ‘thrilled’ over £99.5m cash boost

Walking towards the main entrance of Luton and Dunstable Hospital, you can tell this is a complex in need of a cash injection.

The main hospital buildings are old and they look tired and dirty from the outside – a few pots of paint should definitely be something added to the shopping list.

My thoughts about the hospital, which sees around half a million people come through its doors every year, were echoed by the deputy chief executive, Cathy Jones.

“You can see why we need the cash,” she said, as she took me through the corridors to the outpatients’ clinic.

And they are getting the cash. In fact, they are getting the second biggest slice of the pie.

A total of £99.5m will be injected into Luton and Dunstable Hospital, with the staff here seeing it as a reward.

Cathy Jones and her team applied for this chunk of money when the last pot of cash was made available, but they weren’t successful.

But now, 10 days after the pledge made on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street by new PM Boris Johnson, they have been told they will get the cash.

What difference will the money make at this hospital though, other than a lick of paint?

Well, the plans are vast, and they have been in the pipeline for some time.

They include a new five-storey acute services block to be built after demolishing the old building. This acute services block will then become home to a brand new neo-natal intensive care unit.

It means the facility will have new operating theatres, which will expand the quality of care.

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And it also means the hospital can go ahead with a planned merger with Bedford Hospital, creating long-term investment plans.

But as rundown as the current hospital may seem, when we walked into the delicate neo-natal intensive care unit, you can tell the care here is excellent – and the ‘good’ rating from the Care Quality Commission is evident.

Inside the unit, 11 of the hospital’s tiniest patients were being looked after by nurses and doctors – all of them on incubators, all being carefully monitored.

I spoke to Jennifer Birch, the neo-natal clinical director, who couldn’t contain her excitement when she told me about the moment she heard about the funding.

She said: “I was thrilled and delighted to hear about the new funding. It’s so lovely to see that care that we deliver is rewarded.”

She added: “Although the care we deliver is quality, our hospital infrastructure and the building we’re delivering that care in doesn’t quite match up, so this cash is fantastic, and we can develop our services into the 21st century.”

Like many other hospitals, the L&D has been subject to huge cuts and the impact on staff has been huge.

But the vibe and mood I picked up from those I spoke to was very positive.

Dr Birch said: “It will be a huge moral boost for all our staff for all the hard work they do every day.”

There has been speculation flying around from my political colleagues that this funding wasn’t necessarily ‘new’ and that these 20 beneficiary hospitals had the money all along.

But in speaking to Cathy Jones, she reassured me that the £99.5m was something they had never seen before.

She said: “This money will make a real difference to patient and staff experience by delivering new facilities for critical care, maternity services, the level-3 neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) and operating theatres.”

It’s clear by just walking through the facility and chatting to both senior staff (and those who probably have very little say on the spending of this hospital), that they needed this money to improve services, update equipment, and make this building the very best in the care it offers.

(c) Sky News 2019: Luton and Dunstable Hospital staff ‘thrilled’ over £99.5m cash boost