The NHS needs to drop its ‘fixation’ with bricks and mortar and work with industry to embrace modular and mobile construction methods in order to enhance services and improve efficiency, experts have warned.
Speaking to BBH this week, Steve Peak, business development director at mobile healthcare solutions company, Vanguard Healthcare, explains: “There is quite a change in thinking that is required of the people who make decisions within healthcare.
There is quite a change in thinking that is required of the people who make decisions within healthcare
“The marketplace is asking them to consider a move away from providing healthcare in hospitals to offering services closer to patients’ homes. And this means providing the infrastructure to enable them to do this.”
Vanguard and other providers are currently educating the healthcare sector about the scope of modular and off-site construction methods to help create the buildings needed to deliver this new model of care.
“We are meeting with senior individuals, particularly in rural areas, and talking to them about their needs and what we can do to help satisfy those,” said Peak.
Last year BBH revealed how Vanguard had created the idea of ‘Healthports’. These essentially consist of a static central area, with ports or doors that high-tech mobile units can ‘dock’ with to create a functioning hospital on a week-by-week basis.
The fixed central area houses the necessary patient processing areas such as a reception, offices, wards, hallways, toilets and facilities services. However, the areas in which actual patient care is delivered – operating theatres, endoscopy suites, and diagnostics – are provided by mobile facilities docked onto the Healthport. This allows NHS trusts to customise their hospital quickly based on the prevailing needs of patients in the area, and negates the need for significant upfront capital investment in permanent healthcare facilities. One week, the door at the end of the corridor could lead to an operating theatre, and a week later an MRI unit could be there in its place.
By delivering healthcare in this way, NHS trusts will be able to continue to respond flexibly to demand and tackle waiting lists head-on while keeping care within the NHS. It also stacks up financially because although there would be costs for the construction and ongoing maintenance of the central unit as the ‘bolt-on’ mobile elements would only be paid for when they are needed; eliminating the fixed overheads associated with wholly-modular or traditional builds.
“Making use of Healthports will need a big mindset change,” said Peak.
There is interest out there, but it’s about working with trusts to turn their vision into reality and working together on the practicalities of delivering that
“There is interest out there, but it’s about working with trusts to turn their vision into reality and working together on the practicalities of delivering that.”
The idea of more-temporary community-based mobile facilities is already being embraced in areas such as breast cancer screening and MRI, with mobile units often parked up outside supermarkets or doctor’s surgeries.
“In recent years we’ve made some big changes in terms of technology,” said Peak. “
“When you’re looking at operating theatres or other specialist units you need to combine the physical building with systems such as air conditioning and medical gases and that is not easily achieved.
“However, we have spent a lot of time developing the Healthport concept and this has allowed us to produce buildings that combine all these very important features.
“Over the coming months we will be pushing this concept in the UK and across Europe.
“Acute hospitals are bulging at the seams and struggling to meet performance targets. With good facilities that respond to local demand, they can turn facilities off and on and provide more services in community-based settings.”
