Operating lists shut at hospitals

Nearly 20 operating lists at hospitals across Lincolnshire are being closed for three months to try to help balance the books.

Altogether 19 non-urgent operating lists at four hospitals will not be taking new patients until April.

Lincolnshire Primary Care Trust said the move was to manage the budgets.

Dr Martin McShane of the PCT denied it had anything to so with last year's waiting list scandal where figures were manipulated to meet government targets.

"That's one of the things that I can confidently say it's not," he said.

"We have worked with United Lincolnshire Trust to make sure that the patients who were treated in such a manner have now been contacted, that all those people are receiving treatment and, by the end of February, that that problem will have been completely and totally resolved.

"We've firm and decisive action to resolve that."

He emphasised that anyone who was waiting for surgery or who was referred and needed a routine operation would get it performed within 26 weeks.

The hospitals concerned are Boston's Pilgrim Hospital, Lincoln County Hospital, Grantham Hospital and Louth Hospital.