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No more quick fixes: how system ownership can foster stronger partnership working

The government’s Healthcare Infrastructure Plan (HIP2) will see significant investment in more than 40 hospitals across the UK – providing new and refurbished estate whilst transforming service delivery. This investment is broader than acute care and is dependent on demonstrating a sustainable delivery model that extends beyond the hospital front door, and into our communities. The question is, how can we truly ‘transform’ delivery but get it right for the long term? The answer must surely be in how we strengthen partner provider relationships to work even more collaboratively than we have in the past, highlighted in recent policy papers from the Department of Health and Social Care, including ‘Integration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all’.

In Plymouth, the journey to transform the Derriford Hospital model has started with extensive clinical engagement and the development of several shortlisted options with varying degrees of change to how services could be delivered. Since the site’s redevelopment is subject to the Treasury’s Green Book business case approval process, the intention is to reconfigure the site in phases, allowing time for partner engagement and public consultation along the way, as well as an overview of existing community healthcare estate that could be better employed. This means that the timing of a new health and well-being hub in the city centre is very opportune and will drive key conversations across the system. However, nominating and refining the right mix of services that could be relocated from their existing hospital setting is vitally important. The answer to this of course is to ensure the floorspace in this hub is designed flexibly and owned by the system, therefore future proofing the investment for the system, and enabling a truly joined up approach to service delivery planning.

So, work has been undertaken which will not only feed into the hospital’s requirements in the new health and well-being hub, but also into the wider strategic ambition for the Derriford redevelopment: a Plymouth Blueprint to identify the best service locations, based on demand.

It’s early days for The Blueprint and will rely on agreement across the system to provide key information to produce:

  • A map of all existing healthcare estate across Plymouth
  • Information on services located at each site
  • Information on footfall/demand for each service
  • Tenure of each property
  • Condition data for each property in terms of backlog maintenance and functional suitability
  • Provider strategies/plans for future changes to service delivery
  • Information on gaps in service provision or infrastructure

Once this information is captured, it can be analysed alongside population health data to produce a series of joint recommendations that will form the basis of a service delivery master plan, becoming the final Blueprint document.

This will allow evidence-based choices to be made on the right service mix for the long term, for the Plymouth health and well-being hub as well as informing other future initiatives, such as the development of Community Diagnostic Hubs.

Getting agreement as a system to initiate the Blueprint work will be vital, as the work must be system owned. The recommendations from the information gathering stage must, too, be developed as a system, to ensure the best chance of buy in to the outcomes. Planning for the long term, as opposed to finding quick fixes, will make our new hub and future hospital models a real success.

Nicki Collas
Nicki Collas

Nicki Collas is a Chartered Construction Manager and Programme Manager for the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust Future Hospital Programme.

Nicki is a member of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB)’s Exeter Committee and has an interest in growing diversity in the industry and developing a new generation of construction professionals.

Last Updated on 6 July 2022