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Integrated sustainability in Oldham

Budgetary pressures and environmental responsibilities are now important considerations which must be taken into account when engineering NHS facilities and services. This is reflected in NHS Oldham’s new facilities, reports Richard Mackillican

The Oldham Integrated Care Centre opened in November last year and is now one of the largest health centres in Britain. Delivered under a LIFT agreement, it is nine storeys high and offers patients a variety of services including core primary care services such as the five GP surgeries which are located within the building, together with community based services such as speech and language therapy.

The facility also acts as base for health workers who travel out to people’s homes.

“We have also integrated our walk-in centre, our GP out-of-hours service and our urgent care centre so that we can offer a wide range of services to the community,” says Steve Sutcliffe, executive director of finance at NHS Oldham.

This joining up of services is core to the NHS’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint by concentrating services whilst also positioning them in the heart of the community, to make them accessible to those who need them most.

This reduces both the need for patients and staff to use transport, along with integrating environmentally friendly aspects into the centre design.

“Throughout the planning process, we wanted to ensure that we included as many green aspects to the centre’s design as possible. These features include the fact that the building runs on biofuels, making it 90 per cent carbon efficient, along with intelligent lighting systems which only come on when they are needed.

“As far as green ICT is concerned, we have a virtualised server environment which is less costly to run and easier to cool down. Along with these features, we have also allowed our ICT providers to have remote control over our IT services, which means that if any maintenance work needs to be done on those systems, the provider can simply log into our systems without the need for us to leave our computers running over night, again reducing our energy consumption and therefore costs.”

Other efforts which the primary care trust has made to reduce its carbon footprint include reducing the volume of ICT hardware which it uses.

“We are using integrated technology which means that one single device can act as a photocopier, fax and scanner all in one, therefore reducing the need for multiple pieces of equipment. We are also working to use paper more efficiently.”

There have been a number of investigations carried out by public sector bodies into more efficient ways in which they can operate, with many centred around the freedom which the use of ICT affords. This is something which is becoming core to working arrangements at NHS Oldham, according to Steve.

“Because we have such a strong and integrated ICT network at NHS Oldham, it has allowed us to seriously review how we carry out back office operations. We are now looking at ways to increase our workspace efficiency and this includes a reduction in the amount of back office space needed through methods such as flexible and home working, along with hot-desking.

“This also means that we have a productive and flexible workforce, whilst also linking perfectly with our travel and transport strategy, which aims to reduce the usage of travel across the trust, with our more efficient use of ICT playing a key role in that.”

The primary care trust is also looking into more ways in which to reduce the need for travel through the more effective use of ICT.

“We are currently piloting a number of schemes, along with introducing the use of video conferencing to again reduce the amount of travel needed.”

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