‘One of the things I’ve noticed in my role over the past two years is that while we have seen improvements in ‘pockets’ of the country, we still have much work to do to enhance and improve the NHS estate in the community’. This was the opening salvo from Antek Lejk, executive director and partnering lead at Community Health Partnerships, in a presentation titled ‘Improving the primary and community estate: Better Quality, Better Value, Better Health’, given as part of the Planning, Design & Construction ‘stream’ at October’s IHEEM Healthcare Estates 2014 conference.
In his address, Antek Lejk set out some of the opportunities, as he saw them, to improve the efficiency and utilisation of the existing community and primary care estate across England, and discussed the hurdles, exploring some complementary themes to those highlighted by the morning’s previous speakers. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
Antek Lejk – who earlier in his career served as chief executive at two NHS Trusts (the Local Health Partnerships NHS Trust, and Mid Anglia Community Health NHS Trust) and a Primary Care Trust (West of Cornwall Primary Care Trust) – told the conference he believed improving the efficiency and utilisation of the existing community and primary care estate across England was vital, particularly given the challenges posed by the ‘new healthcare landscape’, and the current pressure to identify all possible cost-saving opportunities. While acknowledging that success would require both close collaboration among the various stakeholders, and considerably less ‘silo working’ than currently occurred, the CHP speaker said a more rational, better planned, and more efficient utilisation of existing healthcare buildings, coupled with a drive to sell off, or change the use of, under-utilised premises, could not only drive down costs, but would also release much-needed cash for reinvestment in improving existing buildings.
From builder to economist
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