International specialist health planners, architects and clinical interior designers, TAHPI and award-winning UK architects, Stephen George + Partners have come together in a joint venture TAHPI+SGP to deliver a powerful new methodology to improve healthcare estate planning across the UK.
The announcement comes at a time when the UK’s healthcare environment has changed dramatically and questions are being asked about the future of healthcare provision across communities. The TAHPI+SGP partnership will respond by offering macro and micro solutions that can deliver an affordable and sustainable integrated population health and care system.
Steve Batson, Studio Director at SGP, explains: "The NHS and private healthcare provision in the UK is facing an unprecedented challenge that will impact services for many years to come. This TAHPI+SGP joint venture will offer providers the ability to deliver necessary facilities exactly where they are needed, through an efficient, flexible and budget-conscious strategic tool around the patient journey: Right Space, Right Place, Right Time."
The new joint venture will combine decades of experience and an established reputation in quality healthcare design with cutting edge health planning methodology and software to support the future planning of a holistic, integrated, healthcare economy, focusing on patient needs and affordable delivery.
The methodology has been tried and tested in countries around the world, including South East Asia and Australia, and can define not only what facilities are needed, from doctors' surgeries to specialist neurosurgery units, but where they might be best located to fit the demand. The powerful modelling also allows healthcare providers to use fact-based data to compare different options.
Rick Shands, Director, UK, at TAHPI, says: "We model existing healthcare provisions and map these against populations using available health data such as Health Related Groups (HRGs) in the UK to determine current and future over- and under supplies. This analysis then integrates into our rapid briefing software that is based on the locality's regulations - in the case of the UK, the HTMs and HBNs - together with our own International Health Facility Guidelines. There can be various ‘scenarios' for deploying the needed augmentations to facilities. By testing these at a ‘desk-top' level, we can follow through and test capital costs as well as modelling personnel costs at an early stage, making for better-informed decision making."
Steve adds: "We've worked in the UK healthcare sector for over 20 years and it has long been clear that the NHS needs better strategic tools to deliver an ever-increasing breadth of services through a sprawling and sometimes out-of-date estate. This joint venture will make available a state-of-the-art methodology that analyses current and future population needs against existing healthcare facilities and assets to highlight where there are gaps between patient need and clinical services."
