As part of its Reimagining Health workstream, the Westminster think tank Reform has embarked on a new project to outline a vision for hospitals within a health system that is reorientated towards prevention and early intervention.
The absence of a vision of what hospitals should look like in a prevention-oriented model is one of the barriers to achieving this shift. The Hospital of the Future programme seeks to provide a long-term vision with a new, revitalised model of secondary care for the twenty-first Century.
The first publication in the new Reform series is a framing paper that ‘diagnoses’ the problems experienced by hospitals today. It will be followed by a series of papers outlining a detailed programme of reform to reimagine hospitals for the future.
The challenge of resources
In the introduction to this framing paper, Reform poses the view that a focus on the need for more resource is the wrong approach without consideration of whether the right resources are being deployed to meet the type of demand.
The model of secondary care, it says, is not changing with the nature of demand. Furthermore, it should be viewed as a service, not a building. Reform aims to challenge how the physical hospital building can change, and how the same level of care can be provided outside of the traditional hospital. It acknowledges that rethinking the division of care in a hospital raises fundamental questions about economies of scale, as well as logistical concerns about services, facilities and rotas.
Reform also points out that patient flow within hospitals needs a “fundamental reset,” and promises to explore a more effective model of system-wide integration, the role of management and flow co-ordination as well as the technology infrastructure to enhance this.
