Annual State of NHSScotland Assets and Facilities Report for 2014

7.0 Forward Look to 2015 and 2016

7.1 Innovation and Collaborative Working

Assets and facilities services can be a key enabler for achieving NHSScotland's Quality Ambitions and for delivering the Scottish Government's "20:20 Vision" for sustainable high quality in health including integrated health and social care.

Advances in technology are driving changes in healthcare that are likely to significantly impact on the NHSScotland's asset base. These technologies are enabling care pathways to be developed which deliver more care outside of hospitals and therefore there is likely to be less reliance in the future on buildings to deliver services. Hence, it is essential that the asset base is closely aligned with these changes in service delivery models. This will include the need to carefully examine the balance of investment needs across the different types of assets going forward if the NHS is to maximise the potential benefits of the new technologies and the innovative and collaborative working.

Delivering improvements in quality at lower cost

It is clear that demographic trends and global pressures on health spending will not allow increases to quality that increase costs. The Scottish Government is working with Boards to identify opportunities to deliver improvements in quality at lower cost.

The NHSScotland Efficiency and Productivity Framework is clear that conventional approaches to efficiency will be insufficient to deliver the depth and duration of efficiency savings required over the next three to four years. The purpose of the Efficiency and Productivity Framework is to give real focus to identifying a range of changes which will supportBoards to achieve this alongside the Quality Strategy and to supportBoards to redesign services bringing together all of the dimensions of quality, including value for money. The State of NHSScotland's Assets and Facilities Report is part of this initiative to identify changes that support Boards to deliver improvements in quality and reduce costs by providing an annual high level assessment of the progress that NHSScotland is making on improving the performance management of assets and facilities services.

The case studies included in this report demonstrate that some Boards are at the forefront of the initiatives on innovative and collaborative working and delivering improvements in quality at lower costs. The inclusion of these case studies in this report is aimed at enabling Estates and Facilities Teams within Boards to identify, share and spread good practice and act on opportunities to improve performance.

7.2 Future State of the NHSScotland Assets and Facilities Reports

The work on future State of the NHSScotland Assets and Facilities Reports will continue to provide an opportunity to identify and find solutions to some of the issues and barriers to performance improvement that have been identified to date. They will focus on demonstrating success, and ensuring that important seeds are sown for the delivery of longer term benefits, performance and efficiency improvements in the assets and facilities services across NHSScotland.

More specifically, the development of the 2015 State of NHSScotland Assets and Facilities Report will:

• Continue to challenge and ensure pace, momentum and impact on asset and facilities performance in pursuit of the NHSScoltand Quality Ambitions and its 2020 Vision. This will include continued arrangements to review and provide feedback on the quality of Board's PAMS and changes in asset performance.
• Continue to develop the National Asset Performance Framework to measure national improvement towards the Quality Ambitions and the 2020 Vision. This will include further work on the setting of performance targets within the Asset and Facilities Performance Framework with particular focus on ensuring that they are realistic, achievable and based on current investment plans.
• Highlight the improvements already made in asset and facilities performance that underpin delivery of the Quality Strategy and the 2020 Vision.
• Continue to monitor the quality and consistency of information on assets and facilities, particularly in respect of the wider range of assets (vehicles, medical equipment and IM&T). This will include the implementation of further measures to improve the alignment of the ISD Cost Book with the operational assets and facilities information systems such as EAMS.
• Align the SAFR report with the outcomes and recommendations from the 2020 Capital and Facilities Change Management Plan and monitor progress on its delivery across NHSScotland.
• Monitor how asset management workforce strategies are being developed to support implementation of proposals contained within Boards' Property & Asset Management Strategies and capital investment plans, particularly reflecting on the impact of the national Capital Planning Review currently underway.
• Progress work on establishing a library of best practice case studies and presenting them in this report. The aim being to draw on the outcomes from these studies to provide an evidence base for informing decisions on future investment in assets and for modelling the potential for future performance improvement.
• Continue to include the work and outcomes of the NHSScotland Soft FM and Shared Services reviews.
• Monitor Board's performance on delivering their PAMS and the impact that this has had on both Board and national level performance.

This annual report is, therefore, expected to continue to develop as the key reference document for monitoring asset and facilities services performance across NHSScotland.