NHS Cost Cutting

On a local note: the Lincolnshire Health trusts are planning to close the microbiology lab in Lincoln and expand the one at Scunthorpe, leaving the county with only two labs (the other being in Boston).

This is no doubt a simple cost-cutting measure. Apparently the health trusts have said it will be an 'improvement'. The same kind of 'improvement' you get from closing down libraries, post offices and fire stations.

It's ridiculous that a major hospital in the capital city of the county, in the centre of the county, should have its lab taken away from it. Lincolnshire roads are notoriously dangerous. You can get from Lincoln to Scunthorpe in under an hour if you put your foot down and don't mind risking death by collision with tractors or lorries; and the same for Boston, in 45 - 50 minutes (provided you actually avoid going into Boston during peak hours).

Apart from which, it can take bloody weeks to get a result from a test in Lincoln as it is. Not much point adding a couple of months to that.