The UK healthcare estate encompasses a diverse range of properties, spanning general practitioner surgeries to senior living units and hospitals to care homes. While social infrastructure in the United Kingdom has evolved since Aneurin Bevan launched the National Health Service in 1948, there are areas of the market where the pace of change has not matched that in other developed economies. Shrinking government and local authority care budgets will only constrain progress further.

Here we focus on a specific type of care facility: post-acute rehab units, sometimes known as “step-down care”. Well established in Europe and other developed countries, they do not form part of the regular rehabilitation offer in the United Kingdom nor are they a widely-recognised part of the healthcare estate. Step-down care has been proven to deliver a wide range of benefits, from speeding up physical recovery, reducing readmission and cutting costs, so why isn’t it in the United Kingdom al