Report

Hospital of the future: hospital as a service, not a building

This report from UK think tank Re:State outlines a model that fundamentally changes the configuration of the modern hospital.

As outlined in Hospital of the Future: A framing paper, hospitals are experiencing a fundamental crisis. Rising costs, falling productivity and performance, declining access and deteriorating patient satisfaction are all symptoms of a profound problem. The symptoms, diagnosis and long-term prognosis all demonstrate the need for a reinvention of the hospital model.

In the current model, hospitals provide specialism when complex patients with multiple long-term conditions need expert generalists. The co-location of so many functions and processes in one building leaves hospitals vulnerable to inefficiency and low productivity. Simply being an inpatient often makes patients more unwell. And the physical buildings – hospitals and general practice – tend to operate as islands when they need to be seamlessly working together.

Hospital as a service, not a building outlines a model that fundamentally changes the configuration of the modern hospital. The paper proposes a model that combines a radical increase in virtual care with renewed approaches at system-wide integration. It argues that instead of inefficiently relocating hospital staff and infrastructure to communities, hospital-level care should be delivered as a service through entirely new care pathways, shifted financial incentives, and remote digital tools.