Pilgrim Hospital

Pilgrim Hospital
United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust

East side of the hospital from near the entrance
Shown in Lincolnshire
Geography
Location Sibsey Road, Boston, PE21 9QS, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom
Coordinates 52°59′28″N 0°00′35″W / 52.99105°N 0.00978°WCoordinates: 52°59′28″N 0°00′35″W / 52.99105°N 0.00978°W
Organisation
Care system Public NHS
Funding Government hospital
Hospital type District General
Affiliated university Lincolnshire PCT
Services
Emergency department Yes Accident & Emergency
Beds 391
History
Founded 1976
Links
Website http://www.ulh.nhs.uk ULH
Lists Hospitals in the United Kingdom
Other links WikiMapia

Pilgrim Hospital is a large hospital in the east of Lincolnshire on the A16, north of the town of Boston near the mini-roundabout with the A52. It is situated virtually on the Greenwich Meridian and adjacent to Boston High School. The fenland area of Lincolnshire is covered by this hospital, being the county's second largest hospital after Lincoln County Hospital.

History

View further from the east

The former Boston General Hospital was situated on South End. The hospital fully opened in 1976, although parts had been open a few years before, since around 1970. The hospital was officially opened on 23 June 1977, by Princess Anne, when she also visited RAF Waddington.

It is named (like many other organisations in Boston) after the town's Pilgrim Fathers. The new building was designed by the Building Design Partnership, one of its earliest public buildings, under Sir George Grenfell Baines,[1] after a design competition in 1961. It was initially run by the South Lincolnshire Health Authority, based in Sleaford.

Facilities

View from the rear

The main part of the hospital consists of a ten-storey building. This is one of the tallest residential buildings in Lincolnshire. It has twenty wards. It has a busy maternity unit. The helicopter landing pad, used by the Lincolnshire & Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance, is a hundred metres north of the main building.

The University of Nottingham Medical School has a site for nurses at the hospital. It has no contact with the University of Lincoln.

The £2.1 million medical education centre was built in late 1992 by Lindum Construction (for the Trent Regional Health Authority).[2] It was later renovated in April 2008 by Taylor Pearson of Woodhall Spa.[3] In 2009, 303 flats for hospital staff were built by Faithful+Gould. In June 2011 a £2.5 million renovation began[4] on the Endoscopy unit.

In 2010, the Energy Centre was overhauled. Cofely (part of GDF Suez) installed[5] the first woodchip-fuelled (biomass) boiler (Binder of Austria[6] 2.9MW) in an NHS hospital. Part design and installation of steam and power systems was carried out by biomass and CHP specialist ESP Ltd.[7] The wood chips come from Thetford Forest, around 25 tonnes per day. There is also an oil-fired boiler. The hospital has a need of around 1MW of electricity and 1MW of heat. The boiler chimney is 50 metres high. There is a new GE Jenbacher (also Austrian) CHP unit that provides 526 kW of electricity and 636 kW of heat. The new boiler scheme won the Sustainable Hospital Award at the Health Business Awards in December 2009.[8]

The Pilgrim School is on site for children with chronic conditions, and for pregnant teenage girls (the last eighteen weeks). It is also a special needs school, and works in conjunction with Lincoln County Hospital.

The hospital has a restaurant, café, its own weekday radio station, and car park for 418 cars.

An innovative way of managing hip fractures developed since May 2012, has seen the hospital recognised as the best in the country for treating patients with broken hips with 30 day mortality of 6% compared with a national average of 9% and an average length of stay of 11.6 days compared with a national figure of 23 days.[9]

Health statistics

Boston borough has the highest Total Fertility Rate (TFR) for district councils in England. In the 1970s the borough had a high infant mortality rate.

See also

References

External links

News items

Video clips