Halton Health Hub: Outpatient services from a shopping centre
Organisation: Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts
Location: Warrington, Cheshire
Size: Roughly 4,000 employees
Populations served: Boroughs of Halton and Warrington
Utilising Town Centre funding made available through the devolved governance at Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, the Trust has created an out-of-hospital clinical unit, Halton Health Hub, to provide outpatient services from a local shopping centre within a deprived community. Services currently delivered from the site include hospital-provided ophthalmology, audiology, and dietetic therapies; primary care-provided extended access consultations; and public health-led smoking cessation and weight management. Additional services are planned for 2023, including muscular-skeletal assessments and therapy, and phlebotomy.
To date, the hub has served more than 3,000 appointments over 6 months since opening in November 2022. It has improved access and experience of services, revitalised unused retail space, and encouraged footfall within a town centre area.
Impact of the programme
The Trust has recently reconfirmed its commitment to addressing health inequalities of our populations within our refreshed Strategy, expanding our responsibility to support our communities to live healthy and happy lives. This means our role expands past the provision of hospital healthcare services and includes contributing to the improvement of other outcomes for our population, including employment, education and economic wellbeing.
Halton is in the 20% most deprived boroughs in England. In Halton Lea ward, life expectancy at birth for both men and women are significantly below the national average – 6.4 and 4.9 years respectively. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in lengthier waits for patients accessing care nationwide, and this is reflected across the Borough. Within Halton, and at Halton General Hospital specifically, the pandemic led to reduced capacity due to estate limitations resulting from heightened infection control measures, further impacting on the Hospital’s ability to deliver recovery activity.
Halton Lea is an NHS Healthy New Town demonstrator site. Through this innovative programme, with a focus on designing health into housing and other local infrastructure, a masterplan for the town centre area was created. This identified several opportunities to develop health alongside regeneration within Halton Lea aimed at reducing deprivation and improving health outcomes and wealth inequality. Much of this planned activity looked to take advantage of Halton Lea’s underutilised local infrastructure, including a local community centre and retail location, especially with regards to boosting economic activity and improving employment rates.
How the programme was delivered
We have developed strong relationships with colleagues across multiple organisations at place level over a number of years, including councils, CCGs, third sector organisations, GPs, community and mental healthcare partners and the commercial sector. Our relationship with the councils has been key in securing funding for both our towns, which has enabled us to accelerate tangible examples of working together to improve outcomes, including the Halton Health Hub.
On the back of national investment we have then invested as individual organisations into innovative programmes which historically may not have been viewed as "core business". We have worked together on a number of plans and bids for investment, including theTown Centre Fund, national Town Deal programme, New Hospitals funding, Community Diagnostic Centre programme and Targeted Investment Funding.
We have undertaken public consultation where required to relocate services, with improvements in access seen as a key priority for our local residents. Feedback has been incorporated into designs and outputs, demonstrated by additional privacy measures incorporated into the Halton Health Hub. These lessons have then been applied to additional projects currently underway, including a wellbeing hub within Warrington town centre (due to complete in winter 2023), and a health and education hub in Runcorn (due to complete in 2025).
What is the future of this programme?
We have secured/invested £1m to provide health services in a Shopping Centre, which will not only bring care closer to the community but will also support the sustainability of a key community asset, increase footfall and spend, and provide jobs. The provision will also support COVID recovery by providing an additional 3000 appointments per year.
Additionally an investment as part of the Community Diagnostic Programme within Halton is enabling us to extend the Halton health Hub facility, to offer phlebotomy and additional diagnostic services from the shopping centre location.
Through the national Town Deal programme we have secured c. £6 million to provide new hubs within areas of deprivation within Warrington and Runcorn Old Town. These are targeted investments into areas with poor health outcomes including significant differences in life expectancy when compared to other wards within the same borough. These will allow us to provide more accessible services in areas where demand is high and outcomes are poorer, e.g. diabetes, mental health, older people, in partnership with a range of providers, including third sector. The hubs will also support town centre footfall and economic regeneration.
Advice for others doing similar work
Funding opportunities do exist but aren’t always apparent
Developing relationships across geographic areas is key to understanding what is available and what an area’s priorities are.There is a wealth of data available from different organisations to support cases, especially local public health teams.
Understanding local assets helped in identifying a suitable location – involvement in developing our local plans helped.
For more information about the programme:
Lucy Gardner
lucy.gardner5@nhs.net
Introduction video on youtube
More information via Runcorn Shopping City