| Luton and Dunstable Hospital NHS Trust | |
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| Location | Luton, United Kingdom |
| Organisation | |
| Care system | National Health Service |
| Hospital type | General |
| Services | |
| Emergency department | Yes Accident & Emergency |
| Beds | 500 |
| History | |
| Founded | 1937 |
| Links | |
| Website | http://www.ldh.nhs.uk/ |
| Lists | Hospitals in the United Kingdom |
The Luton and Dunstable Hospital is a medium-size, general hospital run by the National Health Service in Luton, Bedfordshire. Founded in 1937, the hospital is currently an NHS Trust, providing general medical and surgical services, for over 350,000 people in Luton and Dunstable, the south of Bedfordshire, the north of Hertfordshire and parts of Buckinghamshire. The hospital is often abbreviated to the 'L&D', and employs 3,400 staff.[1]
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The first hospital was a modest Cottage Hospital that opened in 1872. The first hospital of any note in Luton was the Bute Hospital which opened in 1882, built on land in Dunstable Road donated by the Marquis of Bute.The site was 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, and a hospital was built. The hospital was opened by Queen Mary on 14 February 1939.[2]
The hospital is managed by a Board of Directors, made up of a Non-Executive Chairman, a Chief Executive, Executive Directors and Non-Executive Directors. The current Chief Executive is Pauline Philip, who joined on July 1st 2010.[3]
In the financial year 2007-2008, the Trust employed over 3400 staff, and had an annual spend of £169 million. In the same year the Trust handled:
L&D is committed to patient safety of all patients in the care of L&D.[5]
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. [6]
Stephen Ramsden was appointed the director of the National Patient Safety Campaign.[7], after the hospital won[8]The Health Foundation's Safer Patients Initiative. He also received an OBE for services to healthcare.[9]
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.[10]