Understanding diverse populations in primary care
As the UK’s second biggest metro economy after London, the city of Birmingham, along with neighbouring Solihull, faces significant health inequality challenges. Serving 1.3m people, Birmingham and Solihull ICB has around 240 GP practices, based in over 200 different buildings. The ICB estates team uses SHAPE to ensure their primary care network provides the best care for residents in all their different communities.
Identifying your localities’ differences
The health and social care challenges faced by residents in Birmingham and Solihull vary dramatically between communities. In some Birmingham wards, up to 80% of residents are from ethnic minority groups, whereas in Solihull it’s just 11%. Overall, the region has the highest level of deprivation of all ICBs.
The ICB estates team uses SHAPE to focus in on the different localities, and recently they have been concentrating on relocating services from main hospitals into the community, to ensure patients don’t have to make long journeys to congested hospital sites.
The ICB used SHAPE to identify that an area in North Birmingham had a lack of musculoskeletal (MSK) services, with patients having to travel a relatively long distance to go to a main hospital. SHAPE was used to identify that an existing complex of buildings – Sutton Cottage Hospital – had both underutilised space and a large amount of paediatric functions. By moving some paediatric services into areas of the site that aren’t currently being used to their full potential, the team are creating a specialist area for MSK-related issues, as well as ensuring paediatric services are more spread out.
New properties
Birmingham and Solihull ICB also use SHAPE to make decisions on new primary care developments for specific localities. When the project team are looking at a potential new location for a health centre, they use SHAPE to provide data for much of the site appraisal. To ensure a new development is necessary, they map housing developments which have approved planning permission to identify areas where healthcare facilities may be overwhelmed by population growth, and then collate information to see how much pressure a locality is currently facing – number of current premises, clinical space and GP list sizes.
Phil Clark, Director of Estates (Primary Care) for Birmingham and Solihull NHS says: “When we’re developing new premises, we need lots of information, even for relatively small-scale scheme. SHAPE allows us to see the journey of a property, and provide maps of catchment areas, potential growth and population size. It’s much easier to present and analyse data when you can see it mapped out – an image speaks a thousand words.”
Phil continued: “SHAPE is my go-to place for data. It’s a fundamental tool in all our capital expansion processes, and the team uses it nearly every day. It saves us so much time, and gives us the data we need for our ambitious plans for the future.”
