International views on a fast-changing future

In the foreword to a lengthy publication produced in advance of the 61st NVTG Annual Conference /3rd IFHE-Europe Congress, held in Goes in Zeeland from 2-3 April, NVTG chairman Sijtze de Boer told delegates that several “big picture” factors, including an ageing population, growing demand for patients to receive more medical treatment at home, and the increasing difficulty many senior managers were having in recruiting skilled and adaptable staff, meant the healthcare sector globally, including the estates and facilities personnel that “keep hospitals running day-to-day”, faced “a number of unprecedented challenges”.

Changing demographics

One consequence of both rising patient expectations, and the ageing population, was an “alarming rise” in healthcare demand, which was “putting increasing pressure on health costs in many countries, the Netherlands being no exception”. Illustrating the problem’s “international nature”, Sijtze de Boer cited data which revealed that, in the Spring of 2008, 700 of Germany’s hospitals were reportedly “under threat of bankruptcy because economic initiatives could not be realised”. Meanwhile demographically he said that, by 2050, the current ratio of five working people to one retired would have changed from two to one. Against such a backdrop, and with sustainability, integrated security, and ensuring business continuity among the many other issues healthcare estates personnel must grapple with, there was also, he argued, a need for different organisational structures within the healthcare sector generally, coupled with a healthcare facility construction system “better aligned with future use and new technology”. In a subsequent presentation, “Healthcare in the Netherlands”, Hans Klein Breteler, a member both of the Dutch Senate’s Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party, and of the country’s Zorginnovatieplaftorm (ZIP), (roughly translated “Care Innovation Platform”, a Government-backed organisation that promotes healthcare innovation via new methods of prevention, cure and care, many of them ICT-based), explained that the Netherlands’ total current healthcare budget is some e60 bn, with around 10% of current construction projects involving new healthcare buildings. While he said the Netherlands “came above average” in its cure rates in the European Health Index, the Dutch healthcare sector was simultaneously facing costs rising faster than both labour productivity and inflation, “a lack of innovative thinking”, and difficulties in recruiting skilled staff. This was as much the case in the healthcare estates and facilities field as in clinical and medical disciplines.