Future Healthcare

Cullinan's Team Community Health attended a keynote speech by the former Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn at the opening of the Future Health & Care Expo this week.

Milburn is an engaging speaker and he persuasively outlined five major challenges facing the NHS today:

1. Demography: How do we care for an ageing population?


2. Malady: Chronic, not infectious, disease is increasingly prevalent, which requires a movement from a focus on treatment to a focus on preventative action.


3. Citizen Centred: There is a need for more treatment in the community lessening the demand placed on hospitals.


4. Higher Expectations: Patients are more informed than ever with greater demands for quality of treatment and use of technology.


5. Money: Spending will need to decrease. A higher proportion of funding will go towards primary care with less spent on hospitals.

These concerns brought to mind our own Lambeth Community Care Centre which is a pioneering intermediate health facility that bridges the gap between GP surgeries and hospitals at the heart of the Lambeth Community. Perhaps something akin to this typology needs to be revisited by health practitioners to meet future health needs in this country? For more on this and our other healthcare projects see here.