RAAC Recovery Planning

Attain, together with our estates partner Shared Agenda, has recently supported several trusts and ICSs to develop plans for the recovery of all clinical and non-clinical services in the event of a RAAC related hospital closure.

Our work has included:

• Engaging with senior stakeholders to build consensus around local strategies, priorities, and objectives; to ensure that recovery plans are aligned to this context.
• Undertaking a detailed estates baseline to understand which areas of the estate are affected by RAAC, and how the risk and scale of failure is likely to change over time in line with remediation plans.
• Identifying options for the reprovision of services across the community, primary, digital, and non-health estate, in parallel with developing solutions that make the best use of any remaining non-RAAC affected acute estate for the services that need to be there the most.
• In depth clinical and operational engagement to understand the current model service provision; agree service groupings based on clinical adjacencies, co-dependencies, and technical estates requirements; test possible relocation options; understand any benefits or risks; and review proposed estate reconfigurations from an operational perspective.
• Undertaking detailed analysis to contextualise the demand and capacity challenges, identify opportunities to reduce the volume of activity that needs to be relocated, and model the required functional capacity under a range of assumptions and scenarios
• Analysing the impact on elective waiting lists and waiting times associated with the transfer of activity to neighbouring trusts, should alternative capacity not be put in place.

We worked at pace to develop tangible, fully costed contingency plans for the relocation of all services, including the optimised use of non RAAC affected estate; digital transformation; temporary/modular builds; and alternative locations in different settings. We have also developed a series of reccomendations around how trusts and wider systems can proactively reduce their risk profile and the time taken to stand up recovery solutions should such an event arise.

To find out how we can use our experience to support your RAAC affected healthcare estate, please get in touch with Gareth Hartley.