With estates and facilities “very much in fashion” given that patients now increasingly put cleanliness and the “general environment” at the top of their agenda, estates personnel now have an opportunity to be “right at the heart of healthcare”, said Health Facilities Scotland (HFS) director Paul Kingsmore, keynote speaker at the recent 2009 Healthcare Facilities Consortium conference in Oxford.
However, achieving this goal would, he said, require not only developing firm goals and a strong, skilled workforce for today, but equally for the next decade and beyond. Jonathan Baillie reports.
Speaking on the first day of the HFC’s two-day 2009 Annual Conference at Oxford’s Kassam Stadium, IHEEM’s president-elect emphasised that, prior to taking up the Scottish role in 2004, he had also worked in senior FM management roles in England and Northern Ireland. While each country had its own distinct organisational structure for the governance and direction of FM strategy and policy, and its own political agenda, many of the challenges were “much the same”. In a presentation entitled “Facilities at the heart of healthcare”, discussing some of the key current priorities and goals for facilities management teams in the Scottish NHS, one of his key messages, echoed by other speakers, was that those driving facilities management and strategies in all four UK nations needed to be looking not just at the present, but up to 10 years ahead. He said: “I won’t be here (in FM) in 10 years, and with statistics showing that the EFM workforce is getting older, we will need to establish clear, consistent, and effective strategies and policies, and to be developing our younger staff’s skills and expertise, harnessing the experience and knowledge of those who have worked in the sector for many years.” Turning specifically to Scotland, Paul Kingsmore said Health Facilities Scotland’s strategies and goals were, as elsewhere in the UK, “increasingly being driven by ever higher patient expectations”. On a wider front, the Scottish Government had set out its stall to create a society that was “wealthier, fairer, smarter, healthier, safer and greener”. Paul Kingsmore said: “If we in HFS are not doing everything in terms of our contribution to healthcare that meets these goals then we’re not doing our job. Healthcare also has a bigger impact on society as a whole than is perhaps sometimes acknowledged.”
Five ‘big issues’
Log in or register FREE to read the rest
This story is Premium Content and is only available to registered users. Please log in at the top of the page to view the full text.
If you don't already have an account, please register with us completely free of charge.
