U.S. healthcare systems are moving away from episodic care delivered in silos to coordinated, team-based care that improves population health. One model, the patient-centered medical home (PCMH), is supported by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), though other groups and systems are creating similar systems with the goal of providing:
The industry has recently taken a keen interest in what keeps healthcare professionals up at night. In hope of shedding light on this topic, HDR recently conducted a survey asking pediatric care providers this very question (the full report can be found here).
Embarking on a new healthcare construction project or retrofitting an existing facility is, in a word, complex. There’s simply no room for error. And yet, thanks to new trends in healthcare—the shift to outpatient services, an aging population in need of greater care, limited funding, etc.—project owners are issuing new demands to contractors and designers.
The Center for Health Design’s mission is to develop and provide built environment solutions for healthcare providers as well as architects and designers, supporting the healthcare system we have today as well as re-envisioning what our future healthcare system and the facilities that support it might look like. In 2015, we’re more focused than ever on providing forward-thinking tools and resources to support our members and the greater healthcare design industry.
Time. It is the one thing we can’t make more of, and the one thing that costs us the most. This is especially true in a healthcare environment, where clinicians are stretched to their limits—expected to do as much as possible, in a finite amount of time, with minimal errors.
From a lack of intuitive wayfinding to poor acoustics to a lack of contrast between walls and floors, many acute care environments are inadequately designed to support seniors.
Sinai Hospital in Baltimore made a profound shift in their medication administration approach by moving the process directly to the patient bedside, with the goal of decreasing potential clinical errors. Like many other hospitals across the US, Sinai Hospital made this transition with an aim to improve patient safety, nursing efficiency, costs, and perhaps most importantly, patient satisfaction.
The media went bonkers last week over a study, published in the March 2015 Journal of Hospital Medicine, that analyzed patient satisfaction survey results to see what role the physical environment played in improving inpatient hospital scores. Provocative headlines included “Fancy Hospital Flourishes Often Fail to Impress Patients” (NPR) and “Hospital Design may not Boost Patient Satisfaction” (U.S.
By definition, a hybrid operating room is a surgery environment with advanced, fixed imaging equipment.
Although the definition may appear simple, there are various layers to the planning and design phases. However, this type of high-performance environment can still come together as simply as it’s defined—when the focus is on the right elements.
The three key issues associated with designing a hybrid OR are planned utilization, equipment selection, and room size and location.
The holiday season’s gift catalogs were filled with wearable devices that help build accountability for physical activity, caloric intake, and weight-loss goals. Many of these gadgets help users stay motivated in the most common goal for the new year—to be healthier.
A multitude of changes have occurred in healthcare systems over the last two decades, including shifts in medicine, regulations, health insurance, caregiving, disease management, technology, systems, patient records, patient expectations, outpatient orientation, facility codes, and the list goes on and on and on.
In light of these, it’s no longer necessary for all healthcare functions to be located within hospitals. Yet healthcare organizations are far behind in adopting this mindset.
Understanding the human experience in healthcare planning and design is essential to creating spaces that meet the needs of users. While human experience in healthcare includes staff, patients, and family members, this article will focus primarily on staff experience to assess how this affects design outcomes.
Identifying the human experience begins in the pre-design stage by looking at three basic criteria:
