A future pandemic is just one of the threats keeping NHS bosses up at night, a new report has revealed.<\/p>\n
Three major risks have been identified as the most serious, and a Lincolnshire County Council meeting next week will discuss how prepared the NHS is for future emergencies.<\/p>\n
According to the report, there were no major or critical incidents over the last 12 months across the county \u2013 these are problems which seriously affect the running of hospitals.<\/p>\n
Boston Pilgrim Hospital and Lincoln County Hospital<\/p>\n
There were 24 more minor \u2018business continuity\u2019 incidents, ranging from heat and flood warnings to strikes and supply chain disruption.<\/p>\n
According to Lincolnshire Health Resilience Partnership (LHRP), here are the three biggest risks facing the health service:<\/p>\n
Pandemics<\/p>\n
While the threat of Covid-19 has receded, healthcare bodies are on the watch for other emerging infectious diseases that the population has little immunity to.<\/p>\n
Since parts of the UK\u2019s response to the Covid pandemic have been criticised by inquiries, planning has stepped up for possible future outbreak.<\/p>\n
Each pandemic acts differently, and will put different groups at risk.<\/p>\n
However Rebecca Neno, the ICB\u2019s deputy director for system delivery, said last year that Lincolnshire would be more prepared for the next one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a much better position than during Covid because we have learnt so much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the next pandemic won\u2019t look like Covid \u2013 we will have to respond to something much different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am confident we will keep people safe, and do everything we can with resources we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Exercises are carried out every year to test how prepared services are to deal with events like these.<\/p>\n
Cyber attacks<\/p>\n
The threat of criminals exploiting digital weaknesses is becoming an increasing risk for large organisations.<\/p>\n
An attack in 2024 targeted a pathology service Synnovis, causing over 11,000 delays and cancellations across NHS trusts.<\/p>\n
Hospitals have previously been hit by ransomware attacks in the past, in which hackers demand payments in order to unlock infected computers.<\/p>\n
The LHRP said: \u201cCyber security threats have been assessed as high risk, both nationally and locally, with work planned through LHRP over the coming 12 months to strengthen cyber preparedness and response protocols.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Malicious\u2019 attacks<\/p>\n
The possibility of people intentionally targeting healthcare providers is also a risk.<\/p>\n
The Lincolnshire Resilience Forum highlights the threat from organised groups such as \u201cextreme Islamist terrorists or extreme right-wing terrorists\u201d, as well as lone actors.<\/p>\n
Lincoln County Hospital suffered a serious arson attack in 2022, which caused \u00a31.9million of damage and closed the A&E department for two days.<\/p>\n
John Gillon Watson was jailed for six years and nine months for starting the fire, which destroyed an ultrasound machine and damaged other crucial equipment.<\/p>\n
The LHRP said: \u201cThe threat of malicious attacks remains high nationally, and this is reflected in the local risk assessment.<\/p>\n
\u201cLHRP continues to monitor this risk in collaboration with the Local Resilience Forum, with ongoing training and exercising to ensure readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lincolnshire County Council\u2019s Health Scrutiny Committee will discuss the emergency preparedness on Wednesday, February 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A future pandemic is just one of the threats keeping NHS bosses up at night, a new report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[8738,102,2960,8739,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-438246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-all-lincolnshire-news","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-lincs-homepage","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}