OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
How are you going about this? We have two direct interventions aimed at reducing the burden of long-term conditions through movement as medicine. The first is the provision of free community rehabilitation programmes using movement. The second revolves around research and academic partnerships, with the learnings used to evolve our free services and our paid-for pathways within primary care, secondary care, rehabilitation/ prehabilitation and post-operative recovery. In terms of live examples, our Nuffield Health at St Barts Hospital in London – with its cardiac speciality – is next door to our Barbican Fitness & Wellbeing Centre. Evidence shows that rehab after cardiac surgery speeds up recovery and maintains positive outcomes for longer. And so our Barbican gym works with the hospital, with physiotherapists, exercise physiologists and rehab specialists on-site. Rehab specialists are unique to Nuffield Health: upskilled PTs who have undergone behaviour change
and coaching training, as well as some physiology and basic physiotherapy training. We have around 260 of these individuals across the organisation and we’re implementing them as part of a multidisciplinary approach across surgery prehab and rehab pathways – pathways that start in the hospital and migrate into the Fitness & Wellbeing environment. I see this as the future of hospital-based medicine. Healthcare is already brilliant at treating people episodically, but it isn’t very good at ongoing maintenance, management or the health-building aspects of recovery. This is where the fitness sector can come into its own. Another important Nuffield Health initiative is our Joint Pain Programme, which is completely free of charge as part of our work as a charity; last year we reached about 12,500 patients. The period of intensive intervention is just 12 weeks – with six months’ free access to our gyms – but at 12 months, there’s still a 25 per cent reduced need for primary care (GP) appointments. From the first pass at the data, it looks as though this holds true at 24 months too, which is very exciting.
DR DAVINA DENISZCZYC
There is brilliant work already happening, but for some reason we don’t share, it doesn’t scale, it isn’t commissioned
As a sector, we can drive the health agenda by getting better at data, collaboration and workforce empowerment, says Nuffield Health’s charity and medical director, and responsible officer
How does Nuffield Health bring health into fitness? It was in 2009 that Nuffield Health first set up a clinic within one of its gyms. I remember having conversations with the regulators, who at the time didn’t know what to do with us: was it leisure, was it healthcare, was it regulated? Now over half of our Fitness & Wellbeing Centres have CQC-registered healthcare facilities and a multidisciplinary approach sits at the heart of our organisation. Our purpose is to build a healthier nation, with a social impact strategy that’s focused on helping the World Health Organisation address SDG 3.4 – reducing and helping people recover from the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which in the UK is the biggest challenge to the continuance of free-access healthcare.
The problem is, around a third of those living with long- term conditions say current services aren’t set up to cater for their needs. Certainly one of the greatest frustrations I have as a GP myself is that, although movement is the most powerful medication for those living with the long-term conditions – and although over 90 NICE guidelines say it should be part of routine standard care – this only actually happens in tiny, localised pockets. There is brilliant work happening, but for some reason we don’t learn, we don’t share, it doesn’t scale, it doesn’t get commissioned. This is where the work we’re doing at Nuffield Health comes in. We’re big enough that we can test, learn, implement and provide an infrastructure and an operating model that works at a national scale, so they can be commissioned. Of course, Nuffield Health’s purpose is a broad one. However, in my role I look specifically through a patient lens. I believe if we can crack this, the rest is easy.
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STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
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