A blueprint for smaller local acute hospitals

Giving his presentation as one of three speakers in a Architects for Health (AfH)-led session addressing the broader topic of "How to achieve excellence in an age of austerity" at last October's Healthcare Estates conference, Mungo Smith, a founding director and design lead at leading UK healthcare architects MAAP, discussed a booklet he recently co-authored with Andy Black, chair of international healthcare strategic consultancy Durrow, and Johannes Eggen, a partner at NSW Architects and Planners in Oslo. In it the authors argue that there is no reason why "gold standard" acute hospital care cannot be cost-effectively delivered from small, well-equipped local hospitals in the future, but that achieving this will require "a number of (current) NHS conventions to be defied".