On 3-4 July 2008 in London, the NHS Confederation, in partnership with the WHO European observatory on health systems and policies and the European hospital and healthcare federation (HOPE) hosted a 2 day workshop to explore hospital configuration in a number of European countries.

Presentations from this event are now available to download.

Summary of the workshop

The workshop, aimed primarily at informing the development or innovation of clinical and service models in hospital care in the UK, held the following objectives:

• identifying key issues in the planning, configuration and management of secondary care services;
• comparing the hospital service approach in the UK with service models applied in other European countries;
• exploring innovative service models for specific types of patients or interventions, including their impact on aspects such as skill mix, clinical management, financing etc.;
• generating a series of questions for further research and investigation.

The rationale behind the event was to investigate the challenges hospitals face in order to adapt to the changing needs for care, the constant innovation in treatment methods, the shrinking of qualified health professionals, and the evolving position of hospitals in the wider scope of healthcare provision.

Increasingly, hospitals have to coordinate with other levels of care, including social care, as well as collaborate with each other to ensure the best and most cost-efficient use of resources. Hospitals are also more screened and compared in terms of the quality of care they deliver and the outcomes they achieve.

In the UK the discussion on developing new service models in order to improve quality, to better meet patients' expectations, to reduce waiting times and to optimally deploy resources is high on the agenda. Especially the future role of local acute hospitals is under discussion. Not only financial constraints but also other factors, such as the impact of the EU working time Directive, are pushing towards rethinking the role of smaller hospitals and the range of services they provide. Service reconfiguration is a highly sensitive issue as it touches upon the accessibility to specialist services in local communities. At the same time, redefining roles will also have implication at the clinical level. It will require physicians to review their ways of working to ensure safe, evidence-based and cost-efficient specialist healthcare delivery.

Although how hospitals are organized can be very system-specific and determined by local factors and cultures, much can be learnt from confronting these views with other models and approaches applied in other countries. Also experience in operating and communicating reconfiguration can provide useful learning points. This event aimed to draw out comparisons and opportunities for learning between those countries involved.

Speakers from Finland, Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel and the UK attended the event. Presentations from the event can be found on this page.

A final report from the event is currently being drafted and will be published in the coming months.

Presentations

Some of the excellent presentations from this event are now available to download.