ESTATE PLANNING
Healthcare at the heart of local communities
Long before the pandemic, high streets had been in a gradual state of decline, with empty premises seeing a reduction in footfall for neighbouring businesses. In cities and towns, and in typically less central locations, hospitals are full, with little or no means to physically expand, limiting the potential to address ever-growing waiting lists. Kelvin Moulding, Principal of Health Spaces, a healthcare design and construction company dedicated to NHS fast-track design and build, explains how its recent webinar explored this topic.
Working closely with NHS Trusts, responding to requests for help has quickly become a daily reality for the Health Spaces team. As a healthcare construction company we specialise in NHS fast-track design and turnkey build solutions – new builds and re-purposing – but it has become abundantly clear that we have a responsibility to do more: there is now a once-in-a-generation chance to embrace economic and technological changes and put healthcare right where it is most needed.
As Sir David Sloman and Sir James
Mackey of NHS England wrote earlier this year, we will only be successful in delivering these commitments if we work together. Putting more NHS healthcare assets into the heart of local communities presents an opportunity to increase efficiency, lower costs, and improve staff wellbeing, while reducing clinical risk and freeing up valuable space on acute sites.
A first for the NHS It was this drive to play our part in raising awareness of the benefits to Health on the High Street that led to the Health Spaces team visiting the Outpatient Assessment Clinic situated in the Beales department store in Poole. Located in the town’s Dolphin Centre, the Outpatient Assessment Clinic was one of the first of 40 community NHS diagnostic centres to open in England, and offers breast screening and diagnostics, as well as testing and assessments for orthopaedics, ophthalmology, and dermatology. Here the Health Spaces team met Ashleigh Boreham, Deputy director, Design and Transformation, at Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group. Working with the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, the Dorset CCG team set up the Outpatient Assessment Clinic using re-purposing methods. Meeting Ashleigh Boreham and his team really opened our eyes to the urgency – the clinic was the first of its kind, and he was keen to work with us to help share
62 Health Estate Journal September 2022
Ashleigh Boreham said: “The idea is to use the same workforce – ‘lifting and shifting’ them into a new space that they co-designed to work differently, and that works better for them.”
the story so that other NHS providers could benefit.
Webinar on Community Diagnostic Centres Already working closely with Jaime Bishop, co-founder of Fleet Architects, and co-chair of Architects for Health, Health Spaces launched a webinar series to explore Community Diagnostic Centres – from preparing and submitting a successful outline business case, to procurement, design and build, finance, workstreams and recruitment, as well as exploring the wider considerations for Health on the High Street as a model. With over 20 years’ experience as healthcare architects, the Fleet team has been exploring the opportunities for bringing healthcare to the high street. Last year, Fleet Architects was shortlisted as a finalist in the Wolfson Economics Prize awards for its submission: A Well-Placed Hospital. “A Well-Placed Hospital was about
bringing diagnostics to our high street,” explains Jaime Bishop. “The Wolfson essay explored the idea of bringing a whole district hospital to the high street, and its services back into the town centre, and the mutual benefits to patients, staff, place, and the system. We started to look at population density and where health services were being delivered, and thinking about diagnostics which are largely provided by hospitals, of which the majority are on the outskirts of town.
A £9 bn backlog “We also know we have a large and increasing issue for existing sites on the edge of towns – the latest ERIC (Estates Return Information Collection) report last year suggested that there was a £9 bn backlog of maintenance for these hospital sites, most of which are very crowded, with little space to decant. They often tend to be removed from public transport, and are a long way from the amenities of town
Courtesy of University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust
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