Very boring in hospital department recently (2,2,4)
I believe the answer is:
as of late
'recently' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'very boring in hospital department' is the wordplay.
'very' becomes 'so' (both can mean 'extremely').
'boring' becomes 'flat' (flat can mean dull or lifeless).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'hospital department' becomes 'ae' (A and E, Accident and Emergency department).
'so'+'flat'='soflat'
'soflat' inserted into 'ae' is 'AS OF LATE'.
(Another definition for as of late that I've seen is " Recently".)