How big should we build our future hospitals? Our role in the New Hospital Programme
The NHS is embarking on an ambitious journey to reimagine and reshape hospital services for the future. At the heart of this transformation is the New Hospital Programme (NHP), an initiative dedicated to delivering hospital infrastructure that meets the evolving needs of patients and communities across the country.
We are transforming how the NHS models future demand for hospital services and associated capacity requirements
Predicting the future is always challenging - making decisions on the scale of hospital capacity needed in years to come is made harder still by several factors. Up until now, the NHS and wider stakeholders would have had individual approaches to make these decisions. Each new capital investment around the country has taken its own approach to predicting future demand, often with little emphasis on the inherent uncertainty associated with forecasting. Pressures to agree highly optimistic strategies to shift activity outside of hospitals have often resulted in hospitals continued reliance on the use of retained estate.
Recognising these challenges, the Strategy Unit has developed a highly sophisticated, standardised model that is being implemented across the hospital schemes within the NHP.
- The model offers a consistent, transparent, and evidence-based approach to support planning hospital infrastructure - based on a credible picture of future demand that is owned and believed by local stakeholders.
- The model supports systems to develop a highly granular picture of the nature and scale of activity they intend to prevent, de-escalate or shift entirely outside of a hospital setting allowing far more robust planning and investment in community and public health services.
- The model supports stakeholders to embrace uncertainty rather than seeking to artificially eliminate it - so they can engage in informed discussions about risk and the opportunities for greater flexibility and resilience in planning. This in turn is helping to ensure that hospital developments are truly fit for purpose in the years ahead.
- The model will support hospital planning that is informed by future demand forecasts. By encouraging a consistent approach to planning the likelihood of inequalities influenced by planning processes are reduced.
Furthermore, we are open sourcing the model, sharing the assumptions, so that its inner workings are transparent and health care systems in the NHS, wider than the NHP, can also learn from the model. Systems like ICBs can not only look at it and learn from it but also run it with their own data. This model was built in the NHS for the NHS and this transparent approach to modelling enables transferable learning to be shared easily.
Our work is creating an opportunity for learning in the NHS
This programme is not just about building hospitals; it’s about building a body of knowledge that can be shared across the NHS and radically improve future planning and delivery of hospitals and hospital services. By standardising planning assumptions at scale and facilitating comparison between plans, the Strategy Unit’s work is setting a new benchmark for hospital planning. Our approach will allow future analysis to be targeted at the areas where hospital schemes report the highest levels of uncertainty - it will also enable continuous improvement of hospital planning by tracking and analysing how assumptions play out in practice over time. This systematic learning process is key to overcoming the optimism bias that has hampered planning efforts in the past.
Our role is supporting the programme
Our role goes beyond developing and delivering cutting-edge analytical models. We are committed to building local capacity by providing comprehensive training and support to the multidisciplinary teams involved in developing each hospital scheme in the NHP. From workshops to support local clinical and operational staff in developing their assumptions about the future, to our technical sessions to help analytical leaders make the best use of our models – our aim is to empower local staff with the tools they need to make informed, evidence-based decisions. Likewise, our role in supporting the New Hospital Programme includes:
- A rolling programme of analysis focused on the factors affecting future hospital demand
- Development of a series of connected models to support a more holistic and ‘system-focused’ approach to decision-making on future hospital and community services
- Synthesising and sharing emerging learning from delivery of the programme.
As we continue to deliver this programme of work, the Strategy Unit remains at the forefront of supporting the New Hospital Programme, ensuring that the NHS can deliver hospital and community services that meet the needs of patients for the future.
