Good investment decisions and tangible improvements to services depend on well thought through and informed strategic service and estates planning.   An integrated healthcare strategy for primary care premises should describe:

• current provision of primary care services and why these arrangements need to change
• an appreciation of national policy, as detailed in such documents as "Our health, our care, our say" and "The NHS in England:  the operating framework 2007/8"
• the local vision for primary/community health services development based on local needs
• local arrangements for delivery of the modernisation agenda
• the procurement process, including ways of establishing agreements with developers
• costing assumptions for funding the improvements
• project management arrangements, including a procurement timetable.

Acton Shapiro has a wealth of experience of working with primary care organisations on the preparation of SSDPs and business cases.  Clients have included four Local Health Boards in North Wales and several PCTs in England, including Westminster, Northamptonshire Heartlands, Milton Keynes, Hartlepool, Canvey Island, Hull and Rotherham.  We have also assisted the LIFT initiative in St. Helen’s, Oldham, Bury and Hull and have written the “Procurement” and “Strategic Planning” sections of the Premises Guidance for the GP (GMS) contract.

For the eighteen-month period up to April 2007, Acton Shapiro was commissioned by the Primary Care Estates Lead Group of the former North and East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire Strategic Health Authority (now part of Yorkshire and the Humber SHA) to provide assistance to the ten PCTs in the area in the preparation of their Strategic Service Development Plans.

For more information, please contact Chris Acton or Richard Banyard.