The New Hospital Programme (NHP) delivery team is planning a major event in September where trust schemes and healthcare industry suppliers will gather for a day of “challenge and innovation”. It’s an example of the focus on partnership working that the team is keen to pursue in bringing the UK Government’s manifesto commitment to build 40 hospitals across England by 2030 – as well as a further eight already in construction – to fruition.
In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS England chief sustainability officer, Dr Nick Watts, turned around to the Board and asked them if some of the climate change actions they had been pursuing should be put on the backburner temporarily while attention was focused on the public health emergency.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat!” The famous line from the 1975 movie Jaws was the take-home message from Royal College of Physicians president Andrew Goddard’s EHD 2022 keynote talk, who began with a sombre depiction of the current state of healthcare, which, he said, is currently being visited by the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” – conquest, war, pestilence, and death.
