With the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan promising radical change to bolster the NHS for generations to come, designing for healthcare needs to reflect a new form of service delivery. Mark Dando, director of cost management at consultancy Pick Everard, explores how high street locations could be the key to unlocking convenience and ease of access for patients.
The neighbourhood health service, designed around you — that's the vision outlined in Fit for the future: 10 Year Health Plan for England. As you might expect, there are some big promises in there, and making good on those pledges is going to hinge on having the infrastructure to support the exceptional service provided by our healthcare professionals.
Putting patients first is more than a sympathetic bedside manner — it boils down to everything from how an environment puts a patient at ease to how well served a location is by public transport. As last year's IHEEM Healthcare Estates conference focused on the role that architecture, engineering and estate management play in promoting 'prevention rather than cure', the case for revisiting the idea of health on the high street seems stronger than ever.
Health on the High Street was first mentioned in an NHS Confederation report in 2020, with a concept of 'reimaging the connection between the NHS and the high street', and the role health could play in supporting economic and social recovery. More broadly, it was proposed as a way for the NHS to get directly involved in high street policy, supporting communities through the reshaping of vacant high street units into integrated health centres, thereby revitalising footfall in town centres.
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