Calls for estates to be refurbished to meet the demands of the reformed NHS
WITH money for major new healthcare developments drying up, NHS trusts are being urged to consider refurbishing existing estates.
Industry experts speaking at BBH’s Healthcare Infrastructure 2011 conference in Birmingham earlier this week heard that well-planned revamps can have as much of an impact on clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction as state-of-the-art new buildings.
And, with little capital available for large-scale schemes, trusts are being urged to make better use of what they already have.
Susan Francis, special adviser for health at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and Architects for Health, said: “We have had 10 years of fantastic innovation in terms of healthcare design, but things are changing fast and we need to shift from a culture of investment to one of austerity. We need our estates to be fixed and adapted to be able to cope with the changes the reforms of the NHS will bring and we need to plan for uncertainty and design for change.”
We need to do little bits to the estate, rather than intrusive redesigns to make it work more efficiently for us. It doesn’t have to be whole-scale change
This means making sure buildings are future-proofed and, if necessary, can be altered in the coming years when clinical approaches change. The shift outlined in the NHS white paper away from hospitals and towards community care also means larger hospitals will be used less and new facilities will need to be provided closer to patients’ homes.
Francis said: “We have always thought of hospitals as very special places that need to be designed in a bespoke way. We have got to look at making the best out of each site, but maybe there is something in standardising hospital design and thinking about what we can do differently.
We always assume that old buildings are less useful than new ones. There needs to be much more indepth research into whether existing estates can be changed
“It is like the developments in keyhole surgery. We need to do little bits to the estate, rather than intrusive redesigns to make it work more efficiently for us. It doesn't have to be whole-scale change.
“We always assume that old buildings are less useful than new ones. There needs to be much more indepth research into whether existing estates can be changed.”