Shifting services and enhancing efficiency

One key conclusion was that estates and facilities professionals will, in future, need to adapt quickly to a scenario where a growing number of services once considered core to large acute hospitals will migrate to more “all-embracing” primary care facilities nearer to patients’ homes. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.

  The 2010 HefmA 2010 conference, held at the Pavilions of Harrogate, commenced with Alison McCree, chair of host organisation the Health Estates & Facilities Management Association’s Northern & Yorkshire Branch, introducing as the first speaker HEFMA’s president Bill Murray OBE, formerly chief executive at South Tees NHS Foundation Trust. Beginning with a clear warning about the “very challenging” financial scenario confronting the healthcare estate sector in the short-to-medium term, he told delegates: “Despite what has been said recently by the new coalition administration, I believe anyone who genuinely believes the new Government will protect the NHS in its entirety over the next 4-5 years is in for a shock.” While those providing frontline health services, such as doctors and nurses, would, he believed, generally escape the worst ravages of any spending cuts, he expected healthcare estates personnel to be “in for the mother of all cost improvement programmes”, requiring them to run and maintain their estates “more efficiently, and more productively, and with significantly less waste”. Predicting that the current downturn could impact on healthcare spending for of up to decade, he said EFM personnel would need to exhibit “a considerable degree of creativity in getting more from less”. “However, he told delegates, “despite the current doom and gloom, the recession will by no means be all bad news for estates personnel, because the difficult economic conditions we now face can be a real catalyst for positive change.” There was now, in particular, he argued, “a great opportunity to further enhance both the quality of care provided to patients, and the environment in which that care is delivered”, especially as patients would remain “just as needful of health services and, if anything, more assertive than ever, about how, and where, they are treated.” Following Bill Murray’s presidential address, a keynote speech was given by Bill McCarthy, chief executive of NHS Yorkshire and Humber. A trained economist, who has operated at board level in the NHS, central, and local government for the past eight years, he most recently served as chief executive at the City of York Council, immediately previously having been director-general at the Department of Health responsible for health and social care strategy, system reform, and policy development and implementation.

Changing picture on spending