Anne DiNardo

The facts cannot be overlooked:  Alzheimer’s is identified as the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. and one out of three seniors is being diagnosed with the disease.

Nursing staff are on the frontline when it comes to witnessing the rise in obesity in the U.S.

A few years ago, employees at Cincinnati-based Mercy Health began to regularly see patients who weighed 450 pounds and more. In conjunction, injury rates and patient handling incidents began to grow.  

In this series, Healthcare Design magazine asks leading healthcare design professionals, firms, and owners to tell us what’s got their attention and share some ideas on the subject.

Here, Jean Hansen, sustainable interiors manager, senior professional associate, HDR Architecture (San Francisco), talks about some of the regulations and standards on her mind that are influencing materials and products selection for healthcare settings.

1. Better product content disclosure

The topic of aging and long-term care is certain to stay on our radar screens as Baby Boomers grow older and the population in general lives longer into its golden years.

With that comes concern about dementia, which increases with age. In the U.S. alone, the cost of dementia is calculated at $157 billion to $215 billion annually—making the disease more costly than either heart disease or cancer, according to a recent study by RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization.

The 94,000-square-foot Stonebridge at Burlington opened in April and is the largest of The Northbridge Companies’ (Burlington, Mass.) assisted-living facilities. Designed by The Architectural Team Inc. (Chelsea, Mass.), the 110-living-unit community accommodates a spectrum of physical and mental levels of independence and acuity.

When news about rising obesity rates in the U.S. first started making headlines, many in the design field agree healthcare facilities weren’t quite prepared to deal with this emerging population group. For instance, existing hand rails and toilets weren’t designed to support obese patients or visitors, procedures weren’t in place to help caregivers safely deliver treatment, and accommodations fell short of making all patients feel comfortable within the hospital setting.

In this series, Healthcare Design magazine asks leading healthcare design professionals, firms, and owners to tell us what’s got their attention and share some ideas on the subject.

Here, Mike Zambo, principal for healthcare design at Bostwick Design Partnership, collaborated with colleagues Robert Bostwick, Matt Bode, Judy McGlinchy, and Mala Yin to offer some perspective on bariatric design standards, patient rooms, and the importance of validation for evidence-based design.

Pregnant women are given an abundance of advice from family members and strangers alike on things they should do before their little bundle of joy arrives, ranging from “go to the movies” and “eat at non kid-friendly restaurants while you still can” to “catch up on sleep now.”

There’s been a lot of attention in the media this week relating to National Nurses Week. The event, which kicks off each year on May 6th and ends on May 12th, Florence Nightingale's birthday, is focusing on the theme “Nurses – Delivering Quality & Innovation in Patient Care.”

Behavioral health centers have come a long way from the days when security and durability governed their design. A lot of those changes come from better design principles in general, such as improved access to natural light, amenities that empower and stimulate patients, and facilities that promote independence and healing. “Everything that we’ve learned about how design can influence physical health, we need to be applying to mental health, because in the end, it has the same effect,” says Don Thomas, a principal at St.

University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital opened the doors to a relocated and renovated behavioral health unit in Minneapolis, in November 2012. The design team at BWBR worked with the staff at Amplatz to create a space that better aligned with the newly constructed main hospital.