NHS Open Space unlocks hidden estate capacity to support more patient care
- 11m+ patient consultations enabled through flexible use of space proving the impact of optimising existing buildings.
- Research evidence highlights significant, untapped capacity across the NHS estate, with 4m already avoided in unnecessary spend.
- Service helps estate leaders make better use of current buildings, supporting more care without major new investment.
NHS Open Space, the flexible space management solution from NHS Property Services, has this week released new findings from a study involving over 8,000 utilisation sensors installed across the NHS estate, helping leaders plan and deliver more effective use of their buildings.
As the NHS responds to increasing demand and a growing need for flexible, neighbourhood-based care, estates leaders are under pressure to make sure every available space is working as hard as possible.
NHS Open Space gives organisations the insight, tools and expert support to identify capacity, making spaces bookable, improving utilisation and supporting better access to services for patients.
Understand, Manage, Optimise
Its practical maturity model - Understand, Manage, Optimise – outlined in its new guide published this week, enables NHS Open Space to help estates teams across the NHS turn data and insight into action, identifying opportunities across their buildings and releasing more value from existing healthcare space.
Estates leaders can download the brochure to explore the data, learn from real NHS case studies, and discover how organisations have used utilisation insights to avoid unnecessary capital projects, increase service provision and optimise their estate.
The approach has already helped NHS organisations avoid 4 million in unnecessary spend by identifying capacity within existing buildings.
Utilisation data from 6,000 rooms across more than 400 customer properties has highlighted opportunities to make NHS buildings more flexible and efficient, freeing up space for services
Vacant space utilisation
The platform is also helping NHS teams manage space more effectively. Across the NHS Property Services estate, NHS Open Space has doubled utilisation since 2020 by making vacant and underused space flexible and bookable.
And it connects NHS landlords with a network of more than 8,000 pre-vetted healthcare provider professionals, supporting more than 800,000 bookings across over 170 service types and enabling more than 11 million patient consultations.
Chris King, Head of NHS Open Space at NHS Property Services, said: “NHS Open Space is about helping the NHS get more from the buildings it already has. By giving estates leaders clearer insight into how space is being used, alongside the tools to manage it more flexibly, we can support our NHS colleagues to reduce waste, unlock capacity and deliver more services for patients in the right places.”
Some examples of how NHS Open Space has made a real impact include:
- Sudbury Community Health Centre, where a utilisation study identified enough capacity for GP services to expand within the existing footprint, avoiding the need for a 1.5 million extension.
- Bath Road in Reading, where utilisation data supported consolidation and redesign, unlocking over 1.1 million in combined savings and creating new clinical capacity within the existing building.
Since 2019, NHS Open Space has unlocked more than 45 million of value for NHS organisations, generating more than 6 million in additional revenue from external bookings, and is forecast to save NHS landlords 3.9 million over the next two years by making better use of existing space.
NHS Open Space supports estate leaders to improve utilisation, reduce costs, generate revenue from unused space and create more capacity for patient services.
