Our five provider trusts

The five provider NHS trusts in Lancashire and South Cumbria are working together as one team to address the significant challenges we face and improve care across the whole area. 

The five trusts are: 

• Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (opens in new window)
• East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (opens in new window)
• Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (opens in new window)
• Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (opens in new window)
• University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (opens in new window)

How we are working together

Our joint aim is to ensure we have joined-up clinically and financially sustainable services that improve health outcomes, reduce health inequalities and offer a great place to work. 

To this end, our teams, including our senior clinicians, have been working together to better understand the issues we are facing and what the solutions might be.

An important part of our clinical strategy is to ensure that services are as close to people’s homes as possible, whenever they can be. We also want to make sure that people have the same access to high-quality care no matter where they live in Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Given the challenges we face, we believe that the only way to do this is for the five provider NHS trusts to work collaboratively as a connected network of service providers. 

This approach supports how our patients would like services to be run; joining up health and care services is a top priority for many people who live in Lancashire and South Cumbria.

By working as a joined-up network we would be able to share best practice, pool resources and standardise services – improving reliability, access and quality across the whole of Lancashire and South Cumbria. 

Collaborating and working across single, larger, more resilient teams would also mean our colleagues can more easily share their skills and expertise.

This approach supports individual trust clinical strategies, which would continue to describe how services are run locally. It would also support the continuing development of the New Hospitals Programme (opens in new window).

National standards and best practice

To get the best outcomes for patients, clinical services should follow national standards and best practice.

Much of this best practice is available through national programmes designed to improve care called Getting it Right First Time - GIRFT (opens in new window) and Model Health System (opens in new window).

To make sure our services offer the best care, we are aligning our clinical improvement work to these programmes.

Addressing health inequalities

As well as improving services, our hospitals need to strengthen their work to help address health inequalities - unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population, and between different groups within society - as part of the wider health, care, employment, education and housing system. Again, we know reducing health inequalities is a key priority for local people.