The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Trust is a 514-bed general hospital providing services to West Norfolk and parts of Breckland, North East Cambridgeshire and South Lincolnshire.
We provide a comprehensive range of specialist, acute, obstetrics and community-based services. Treatment of cancer patients is amongst the best in the country - our Macmillan Centre provides palliative care for patients with cancer and other chronic illnesses - and we have a ‘Charter Mark’ award-winning Day Surgery centre.
The main hospital complex is on the outskirts of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, although some specialist services or clinics are provided at outlying facilities such as the North Cambridgeshire hospital in Wisbech, and Swaffham Community hospital.
Our catchment area covers the towns of King’s Lynn, Wisbech, Hunstanton, Downham Market and Swaffham, with the remainder of the population in villages and hamlets across an area of more than 750 square miles. The population of this area is approximately 220,000 people.
Our population profile includes a high proportion of older residents, since this is a popular coastal retirement area. However, new housing developments in recent years have seen large population growth in towns such as Downham Market, principally of families with children.
The hospital Trust employs 2,400 staff and has an annual budget of around £112 million a year. We are one of the 12 most efficient hospital Trusts in England in terms of value for money and managing our operational costs. Our administration costs are just 4.5% of our income.
In 2007/08 we treated 350,257 patients at our Trust. 61,459 attended accident and emergency. 31,584 attended for inpatient or day case treatement. 25,980 attended as emergecy admissions, and 231,234 attended as outpatients.
Our range of services includes:
- Accident and Emergency;
- Critical Care;
- Day Surgery;
- Breast Surgery;
- Cardiology;
- Specialist Care of the Elderly;
- Haematology;
- Cytopathology;
- Dermatology;
- Ear, Nose & Throat;
- Genito-Urinary medicine;
- Maxillo Facial Surgery;
- Pathology;
- Microbiology;
- Neurology;
- Obstetrics and gynaecology;
- Oncology and a specialist Macmillan unit;
- Ophthalmology;
- Orthodontics;
- Orthopaedics;
- Paediatrics;
- Radiology;
- Rheumatology and
- Urology.
In addition we have a renal dialysis unit, which is an outreach unit of the nephrology service in Cambridge. Our oncology service is supplemented by additional facilities in Cambridge, and Thoracic and Plastic surgery services are provided by the Norfolk and Norwich University hospital.
