Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust

Infobox Hospital
Name = Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust
Location = Luton
Country = United Kingdom
HealthCare = UK:NHS
Type = General
Emergency = Includes A&E
Beds = 500
Founded = 1937 (hospital) 2006 (foundation trust)
Website = http://www.ldh.nhs.uk/|

The Luton and Dunstable Hospital is a NHS Trust It is a medium size general hospital in Luton, Bedfordshire in UK With 500 inpatient beds. Founded in 1937, the hospital provides a comprehensive range of general medical and surgical services, including A&E, for over 300,000 people in Luton, Bedfordshire Hertfordshire and parts of Buckinghamshire. The Trust employs 3,400 staff. The L&D NHS Foundation Trust is managed by a Board of Directors made up of a Non-Executive Chairman, a Chief Executive, Executive Directors and Non-Executive Directors. The Non-Executive Chairman is Professor Soraya Dhillon has been Chairman of the hospital since December 1999. It has been a Safer Patient Initiative site since 2004. Reducing the hospital’s mortality rate was a priority for Chief Executive Stephen Ramsden, who believes that saving patient lives must be at the top of all chief executives’ agendas. L&D Hospital Radio and bedside entertainment services such as web and email are provided by Patientline [www.patientline.co.uk] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2441105.stm]

History

The first hospital was a modest Cottage Hospital opened in 1872. The first hospital of any note in Luton was the Bute Hospital opened in 1882, Built on land in Dunstable Road donated by the Marquis of Bute and enlarged to a 40-bed establishment in 1902. There was insufficient space for expansion, so it was decided to build another hospital, with scope for expansion. Ten acres of land, situated in the country between Luton and Dunstable were purchased from Electrolux The hospital was opened by Queen Mary on 14 February 1939.

*Ward 1 was named after Queen Mary;
*ward 2 after a Dunstable grocer, Arthur Frederick Buckingham
*ward 4 after Lady Ludlow from Luton Hoo .

Statistics

The Trust employs 3,400 staff, and has an annual spend (in 2005/06) of £140 million.Last year provided healthcare services for:

*Over 71,000 inpatients and day case patients requiring surgery or medical attention
*Over 200,000 outpatients who attend clinics
*Over 80,000 people who attend the A&E department and
*Over 4,000 babies who are born here. [ [http://www.ldh.nhs.uk/aboutlad/index.htm The Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust ] ]

The hospital's quality has been consistently good over previous years, with reports and surveys to demonstrate this. [ Healthcare Commission Reports and Services http://www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/yourlocalhealthservices/nhsa-zbyorganisationname.cfm?widCall1=customWidgets.content_view_1&cit_id=2637]

The 2007 annual report gave information such as the following: e Luton & Dunstable Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (L & D) relates to 95 non-commercial studies. During this same time period (i.e. 1.4.2006 - 31.3.2007) 23 commercial studies [comprising 10 cancer, 6 obesity, 2 diabetes, 2 neurology, 1 cardiology, 1 obstetrics and gynecology and 1 hematology] are ongoing.

The breakdown of the 95 non-commercial studies is as follows:-
*Research Council work: 7
*University work: 11
*Charity work: 35
*DH/NHS R&D Programme work: 9
*Other work: 7 (i.e. Government Departments and their agencies, the EU and other foreign government departments)
*R&D outside of HSG (97) 32 - other work: 10 (i.e. other NHS Trusts, PCTs etc)
*R&D that has no external funder work ('own account'): 16 [Part of The Department of Health's R&D's annual report - stats http://www.nrr.nhs.uk/2007AnnualReports/2007Report.asp?O=638]

Patient Safety

L&D is commited to patient safety of all patients in the care of L&D [http://www.ldh.nhs.uk/Patient_Safety_00.htm]

Luton and Dunstable has been a Safer Patient Initiative site since 2004. Reducing the hospital’s mortality rate was a priority for Chief Executive Stephen Ramsden, who believes that saving patient lives must be at the top of all chief executives’ agendas.“"As accountable officers we should be deeply concerned about the avoidable deaths happening weekly in our own hospital,"” Stephen says. “"There should be nothing more important to a CEO than saving lives and demonstrating their staff they are interested in this."” [An article from The Health Journal]

Stephen Ramsden was appointed the director of the National Patient Safety Campaign. [http://www.patientsafetycongress.co.uk/page.cfm/Link=86/nocache=true] He also received an OBE for services to healthcare [ http://www.hsj.co.uk/news/2008/01/new_years_honours.html]

Technology

The Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust has announced that it has been provided with a new speech driven system, the ContactPortal by Telephonetics, to improve call management and communications at the Trust.On average the Trust takes over 4000 phone calls per day from outside, plus thousands more internally. The ContactPortal acts as a virtual operator 24 hours a day, using speech recognition technology to answer, transfer and make telephone calls. [ An article from TelecomWorldWire http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ECZ/is_2005_May_13/ai_n13829901/pg_1]

References

External links

* http://www.ldh.nhs.uk/ - L&D Home page.