A flexible solution to capacity challenges

Mobile healthcare facilities ‘provide a plethora of ways to manage capacity’, argues Scott Pells, director at Vanguard Healthcare Solutions, who here examines the ways in which mobile healthcare units ‘offer flexible solutions to clinical capacity challenges’. He considers the pressures on healthcare providers as demand for services continues to rise, and shares examples of how Trusts have ‘utilised flexible infrastructure as an innovative solution to managing capacity and ensuring the provision of exceptional NHS-led patient care’. 

Recent months have seen an array of depressing headlines on the current ‘state’ of the NHS, with waiting lists increasingly growing, hospitals’ nonurgent operations cancelled, and patients finding it more and more difficult to see their GP, with an unfortunate knock-on effect on already overstretched Accident & Emergency Departments.

Despite health spending having been protected in recent years – while police and some ‘welfare’ budgets have suffered significant cuts – the NHS is undoubtedly facing unprecedented pressures in a number of areas, both financially and operationally. One of the key reasons the NHS is facing these growing challenges is that demand for services is rising far beyond the service’s capabilities given its stagnant resources, making maintaining high standards of care a difficult task. The average level of demand has also increased to such a degree that Trusts are finding it hard to manage capacity, even during quieter times of the year