Healthcare properties play a critical role within essential public and private services. But as extreme weather becomes more frequent and severe, both landlords and tenants are exposed to growing risks that can jeopardise business continuity.
Extreme heat, wildfires, and flooding threaten patient safety and can prevent staff from delivering vital care. As these risks intensify, embedding climate resilience into healthcare governance is increasingly important for protecting people, assets, and ensuring continuity of care.
The risk of excessive heat to the healthcare industry
The summer of 2026 was the UK's hottest since records began (opens a new window), according to the Met Office. Long and intense heat forced hospitals to cancel surgeries and struggle to keep patients safe with 33 NHS trusts recording (opens a new window) ward temperatures that exceeded their 28°C safety limit.
For care homes in particular, extreme heat can pose serious risk to patient and staff wellbeing. A recent study stated (opens a new window) that the frequency and intensity of heatwaves are having a profound effect on the mortality rates of nursing and care home residents. Furthermore, in August 2026, the Royal College of Nursing warned (opens a new window) that nurses were ‘collapsing’ on shift in facilities that are ‘not fit for humans’.
Elevated temperatures – coupled with drought and prolonged dry conditions – can invite wildfire risk by transforming vegetation into highly flammable and combustible material. Additionally, extreme heat can also intensify storms and drive intense rainfall. When rain follows periods of drought, hardened soils can struggle to absorb it, increasing the risk of flash flooding.
Both wildfire and flooding can wreak extensive damage to medical centres, GP surgeries, hospitals, and care homes that threatens structural integrity. Furthermore, surrounding infrastructure can also be affected by disrupting power supplies, destroying equipment, and obstructing access routes.
Consequently, facilities can become hazardous or uninhabitable – placing vulnerable patients and staff at serious risk. Closure of healthcare properties can interrupt essential treatment, delay care, and potentially force dangerous relocations.
Healthcare businesses should also be mindful that extreme weather can disrupt supply chains – potentially impacting the distribution of essential medical ancillaries, pharmaceuticals, gases, and food supplies.
What subsequent risks need to be considered?
For owners of healthcare facilities, the priority is keeping assets operational during and after extreme weather. Whereas healthcare providers must manage immediate disruption and address concerns for patient and staff welfare. However, both parties need to also consider the following ensuing risks:
Risks for landlords | Risks for healthcare organisations |
|---|---|
— Loss of income — Property damage — Reinstatement costs — Reputational damage | — Business interruption — Crisis response costs — Equipment and facility damage — Reaccommodation costs — Legal fees — Reputational damage |
No time like the present: insurance and the importance of swift reinstatement
Speed of reinstatement is critical for ensuring continuity of patient care.
From an insurance perspective, a frictionless and swift claims process is essential for resolving weather-related damage and reinstating healthcare operations promptly. Before severe weather occurs, landlords and tenants should understand how their insurance policies will respond. Leases will dictate who is legally responsible for what regarding the premises. It is important that both parties clearly understand this from the outset and align their insurance programmes for their respective obligations.
Both landlords and tenants will be under significant pressure to minimise delays to repairs and reinstatement. If patients are deprived of care, local media attention or involvement from elected representatives can amplify public scrutiny and reputational damage.
Preparing for future climate related disruption
As a key facet of operational preparedness, prudent organisations will possess both a disaster recovery plan and a crisis management plan that address weather-related risks. Periodically, businesses should leverage these plans to conduct workshops that simulate an extreme weather event to test operational resilience. Additionally, risk assessments can also play a critical role for healthcare organisations seeking to identify exposures and prioritise resilience against climate risks. Regulators, insurers, and commissioners are keen to see healthcare organisations embed climate risk into governance frameworks and board-level reporting, as a means of demonstrating foreseeable risks are being actively managed.
As part of routine stewardship of healthcare environments, facility and health & safety management should focus on keeping high-traffic and critical clinical areas safe, functional, and free from environmental issues that could affect patients, staff, or equipment. Furthermore, fire doors, escape routes, and emergency systems should be consistently inspected with defects promptly addressed. Organisations should record inspections and document repairs consistently to support compliance initiatives.
Healthcare businesses must also recognise if wildfire or flooding was to occur, increased demand for local emergency services will result in longer response times and resource scarcity. This should have a strong influence on how healthcare organisations design their response plan.
For landlords, building age is also an important consideration, as older UK assets tend to be less resilient to changing climate conditions and more dependent on HVAC systems to negate extreme heat. However, retrofitting and uplifting existing stock will need to be balanced against cost considerations.
How can property owners enhance their insurance coverage?
For landlords, principal insurance products are property damage and buildings/contents insurance. However, to increase resilience against extreme weather, there are further policies extensions to consider. Examples include:
Accelerated reinstatement
Insurance cover for additional costs incurred to accelerate the reinstatement of damaged property.Emergency services
Coverage for costs associated with damage resulting from the actions of emergency services, including deliberate acts undertaken to safeguard human life.Energy performance and sustainable buildings
Coverage for additional costs associated with improving the environmental performance of a damaged building, rebuilding to a higher environmental standard than minimum regulatory requirements, and use of alternative sustainable materials.Flood resilience
Funding to incorporate flood-resilient materials for rebuilds after an incidence of insured flood damage.Public relation expenses
For costs related to engaging with public relations consultants following insured damage to manage media communications and public announcements.
The strength of collaboration
For landlords and healthcare organisations, maintaining open collaboration is key as their relationship is a strategic enabler for future, mutual growth.
Frequently, and especially in residential care, landlords and tenants will be managing numerous properties across multiple sites together. Therefore, cooperation, a shared understanding of each other’s business objectives, and a transparent relationship is critical for ensuring continuity of care for patients both now and in the future.
The role of the broker: here to help
Brokers can play a key role in helping landlords and healthcare operators assess climate risks and remain resilient as the effects of global heating continue to intensify.
For example, during acquisitions and development of new sites, brokers can support due diligence for future resilience by helping to secure appropriate cover and identifying potential vulnerabilities. This expertise can be particularly valuable for GP practices, where owners can be doctors who – while medically experienced – may have a limited background in insurance procurement and navigating the claims process for extreme weather events.
Our Healthcare Practice specialists work closely with healthcare providers and healthcare facility landlords to understand their respective exposures and identify practical risk and insurance solutions.
For more information, reach out to a member of our Healthcare Practice (opens a new window).
To further explore this topic, our latest thematic report: Global heating: navigating a new business reality, explores how a hotter world is reshaping exposures, insurability, and risk financing.
