Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King's Lynn

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King’s Lynn is an NHS District General Hospital located in the town of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, England. It is located on the outskirts of King’s Lynn, to the eastern edge of the town. The catchment area of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital covers the West Norfolk area, South Lincolnshire and North East Cambridgeshire, an area of approximately 1500km² and 250,000 people. The hospital has approximately 480 beds at time of writing, although the number of beds can vary – wards can be closed in a bid to save money. At full capacity, the hospital has around 574 beds. The Hospital employs around 2400 staff and has around 600 volunteers, making it the biggest single employer in the town. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is a teaching hospital, accredited by The UEA (The University of East Anglia, Norwich). Locally the Queen Elizabeth Hospital is often known as “The QE” or “the QEH”. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is occasionally (and incorrectly) referred to as “The Queen Elizabeth II Hospital” – however, the hospital is named after Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon), not Queen Elizabeth II the current Queen.

The Hospital Site
The hospital site contains the main hospital building, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which is a two-storey building and was opened in 1980. In addition to the main hospital building, the site houses The Fermoy Unit, an adult mental health unit opened the same time as the main hospital building, The Arthur Levin Day Surgery Centre, which was opened on 11 January 1999, the Roxburgh Children’s’ Day Centre, which provides outpatient care for children, the Phoenix Montessori Nursery. The Fermoy unit and the Arthur Levin Day Surgery Centre are both joined to the main hospital building by a long service corridor. Also on the site are Staff Residences and the BMI Sandringham Hospital, a separate private hospital run by BMI Healthcare. The main hospital building has a small shop and a coffee bar for patients, visitors and staff located just inside the main entrance. The main hospital building is, however, coming to the end of its useful life, and may in the near future need replacing either with a new site being built elsewhere in the town, or a new hospital being built on the existing site.

Services Available
The Hospital provides a comprehensive range of patient services, including: Cardiology, Dermatology, Diabetic Medicine, ENT, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, General Medicine, General Surgery, Geriatric Medicine, Gynaecology, Nephrology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Paediatric Neurology, Paediatrics, Rheumatology, Thoracic Medicine, Trauma and Orthopaedics, Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery and Vascular Surgery. It also has a full Accident and Emergency department, and adult mental health service based in the Fermoy Unit. Thoracic Surgery, Neurology and Plastic Surgery are provided by the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, in Norwich, and Renal Dialysis provided at the QEH is an out reach on the Nephrology service in Cambridge. The hospital has MRI and CT scanners on site for imaging and diagnosis. There are 7 operating theatres and 19 inpatient wards. The wards are all named after local villages and towns. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, being a teaching hospital, also has teaching facilities such as lecture theatres and two libraries for use by the students. The hospital also has a staff sports and social club on site.

Performance
The Healthcare Commission reviews hospitals annually and rates a hospital on two points: “Use of Resources” (which is based on finances) and “Quality of Service” (which is based on clinical performance). These two points are rated on a scale of “weak”, “Fair”, “Good” and “Excellent”. In the 2005/06 Healthcare Commission’s review, it rated the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s “Use of Resources” as “Weak” and “Quality of Service” as “Good”. The “weak” rating for use of resources is due primarily to the hospital’s huge debts. The “good” rating for quality of service is indicative of its clinical performance and waiting times. Despite the financial problems the Queen Elizabeth Hospital has one of the highest patient satisfaction rates in the region. The Accident and Emergency department in the hospital is rated at the best in the East of England, treating 98.6% of all patients within the 4-hour guideline. The Arthur Levin Day Surgery Centre is consistently ranked amongst the top in the country. MRSA rates are also amongst the best in the country, with the biggest reduction. Research by a consultant at the QEH, Professor Lyn Liebowitz, have led to a dramatic reduction in MRSA cases, and is now assisting the Department of Health to reduce MRSA in other hospitals.

Finances
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is currently fighting to pay back monumental debts. In 2006 the debt reached a peak of approximately £13 million. Through cost-cutting and cutbacks, the debt is constantly being reduced – by March 2007 it had reduced it to £9.5 million and hopes to get it down to about £6.5 million by the end of 2007 if it can get the money from Norfolk PCT, which is in debt too. Much of the cutbacks have been unpopular such as closing wards and some staff redundancies and sky high parking charges, extreme decisions such as asking staff to take their litter home with them to reduce waste collection, putting a freeze on ordering stationery supplies and talks about selling off hospital land. Although unpopular, these measures have meant the hospital is slowly but surely reducing its debt. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust has been historically underfunded by government, as has the Norfolk PCT as a whole. The hospital has had to stretch what money it has further than it should have, and it is this that has contributed to the massive debts. During 2006 the local newspaper, the Lynn News, was running an appeal to raise money to build a helipad for the hospital; the local community in conjunction with the newspaper raised the money needed, plus more. However, once the money had been raised, the hospital had decided they may need to sell off the land containing the site proposed for the helipad to help raise money to pay off the debts. This caused much controversy in the local community; Other sites for the helipad were put forward, but these would cost more to develop, and planning permission was refused for each site the hospital put forward. In April 2007 the people buying the land pulled out and another buyer could not be found, so the hospital have decided to build the helipad on the site as proposed initially. The Hospital is currently applying for Foundation Status, and if successful the hospital could have foundation status in 2008. This will mean it will have more control over its own finances and the way the hospital is run.

People
Notable people linked with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital include Colin Bone, a consultant gynaecologist who had a sex change operation and returned to work as Celia Macleod. This did make national news, and was generally received very well, by staff at the hospital and by patients. Both the Queen and the Queen Mother had received treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The Queen’s holiday home, Sandringham House, is near to King’s Lynn and so this is the nearest hospital when she is at Sandringham. In February 1998 the Queen Mother was taken to the QE after she fractured her hip at Sandringham, then later transferred to The King Edward VII Hospital in London. In January 1999, the Queen Mother was again taken to the QE Hospital after a series of nosebleeds, where they cauterised her nose. The Queen was taken to the QE Hospital in January 2003 after she had problems with her knee, where they performed a scan, and she was transferred to The King Edward VII Hospital in London for an operation to remove torn cartilage. During her golden jubilee in 2002, the queen who usually spends accession day in private at Windsor Castle, opened the QE Hospital’s £1.2 million Macmillan Cancer Unit. Various members of the Royal Family have visited the Queen Elizabeth Hospital over the years, including Princess Anne who opened the £5 million Critical Care Unit in 2005.