BookingsPlus is helping healthcare estates unlock its assets…

Publication: Hospital Hub (Hub Publishing)

Date: September 2019

Link to full article: https://hubpublishing.co.uk/technology-is-helping-the-nhs-unlock-its-greatest-untapped-asset-its-estate/

For many years, alarm bells have sounded over the squeeze on NHS budgets, as demand for its services rise. NHS England bosses recently warned that hospital patient safety is at risk because of a £4bn cut to capital funding. At the same time, the NHS has been tasked with a second pressure: finding £22bn of efficiency savings by 2020.

The health service faces an enormous challenge in delivering these savings, but the means to do so could be unlocked by its property. The NHS remains one of the largest property owners in the UK, boasting an estate in England that totals some 6.9m hectares. So far there has been little attention focused on how this huge resource could help to improve efficiency, drive cost savings, and ultimately improve patient outcomes, but new technologies are making its maximisation more viable.

At Kajima Community, we are working with a number of healthcare organisations, among them Wessex Health Network, to help manage their property estate more efficiently through the leasing of empty space. Renting out property assets in this way can help lessen the pressure on NHS Trusts, providing a fresh income stream that can help drive efficiency savings or be reinvested in frontline care. When used in the education sector, Kajima Community found this process enabled schools to generate income at an average of £40,000 a year.