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COVID’s lessons highlight the need for flexible primary care

Sarah Beaumont-Smith, CEO of Fulcrum Infrastructure Group, highlights the impressive way the primary care estate ‘flexed’ and demonstrated its adaptability during, and in the wake of, the COVID-19 pandemic. She believes that ‘what was done at great speed and out of necessity’ has ‘helped to change the mindset’ of how capacity in the primary care estate could be used over the longer term.

It is fair to say that we remain in turbulent times across the healthcare sector. We have all emerged from the pandemic hoping for some much-needed stability, and while there are promising signs of things getting back to some form of normality, it is clear that it will not be ‘business as unusual’ for quite some time yet. Added to this, the structure of the NHS is going through important changes – most notably with the new Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) being established across England – that will help to transform how different organisations plan and deliver joined-up health and social care services in different regions. 

It is also a time of huge political change – at the time of writing, two politicians are battling to become the country’s next Prime Minister, and by the time you are reading this, one will have been selected, and will have started setting out their own vision for the UK, including what the NHS of the future might look like. So, the health estate finds itself in a perfect storm of political uncertainty, a changing NHS landscape, and with the after-effects of the pandemic still being felt. 

A track record of resilience

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Upcoming Events

Transforming NHS Estates Conference and Exhibition 2023: Revolutionising Estates, Services & Infrastructure

Royal Society of Medicine, London
3rd October 2023

Healthcare Estates Conference, Exhibition and Awards

Manchester Central
10th - 11th October 2023

Central Sterilising Club Autumn Study Day 2023 – ‘Decontamination – Dare to Defy the Dogma’

LMI Conference Centre, Liverpool
16th October 2023

Future Surgery

Excel Centre London
14 - 15 November 2023

IDSc Annual Conference 2023

The Birmingham Metropole Hotel
28th -29th November 2023

Access the latest issue of Health Estate Journal on your mobile device together with an archive of back issues.

Download the FREE Health Estate Journal app from your device's App store

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