Expanding Healthcare Facilities: Let’s Make Sure We Get it Right
‘Build, Build, Build’ is the current rallying call. Among the assets the nation needs to build are new healthcare facilities. £5bn has been allocated for building programmes in education and healthcare. Much of the added capacity will be in primary care and community settings to help relocate services and minor procedures from hospitals. This is a key step in making health services more resilient and accessible as well as managing the consequences of Covid-19.
Finding the optimum route forward isn’t easy. On the one hand, there is an urgent need for added capacity. On the other, is the realisation that we are creating facilities to meet long-term healthcare needs. We have to get it right and we have to be imaginative if the buildings we create are to be flexible enough to meet the needs of all members of the community, long into the future.
Faced with an urgent need it’s all too easy to start at the wrong end of the process and adopt the solutions that are fastest and easiest to implement. This might be quick, but it won’t necessarily lead to the most sustainable solutions to meet the needs of an ageing population, or those with sensory impairments who find existing services hard to negotiate.
Start With What Communities Need and Work Back
A better option is to start with documenting what we know about current healthcare needs and best practice in building design, and then design-in plenty of flexibility to cope with what we can’t predict. While this calls for more imagination and creativity, it doesn’t necessarily mean greater complexity or cost if appropriate modern methods are selected.
There is also a major opportunity to integrate healthcare into communities and town centres by repurposing under-used retail space. A new age of sustainable design in healthcare is called for. This must extend beyond GP surgeries and health centres to encompass care homes, hospices and all community-based facilities.
Whatever we build today is creating a legacy. The choices we make will determine what type of legacy that is. Building healthcare facilities on this scale gives the UK a unique opportunity to set the benchmarks for design, functionality and accessibility. Osborne has the capability and experience to transform ambitious healthcare designs into time and cost-effective building programmes.
