As healthcare designers, we often invest pre-design time with clients, caregivers, and patient groups to understand needs when planning a new or renovated healthcare facility. When it opens, we then return for a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) to test the effectiveness of design decisions.
Yet how often do we experience a hospital we’ve designed as an actual patient, and not an objective designer?
How does cultural context affect healthcare planning and design? Having the opportunity to recently spend a couple years in Sweden, I’ve found it interesting and valuable to reflect on the similarities and differences in healthcare planning between there and the U.S.
A focused and compassionate care team has proven to be one of the best remedies for patient recovery and healing. It seems obvious, but the opposite can have a negative impact on cancer patients and their experience, and could deter the healing process.
Surveys have shown that the perception of quality care is directly related to the interaction between patients and caregivers. Simply put, caregivers have a direct impact on patient experience; therefore, the needs of caregivers must not be overlooked.
How exactly does the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) implementation affect construction? The reality is that no one knows with certainty.
A lot has been written and speculated about this legislation’s impact not only on the healthcare construction market but also on construction markets in general. The easy answer is that only time will tell.
If you were to ask hospital CEOs what issues keep them up at night, the scope of answers would be as varied as the types of hospitals and health systems out there. The challenges facing rural hospitals differ from those in urban settings, and large-scale systems have a variety of challenges not faced by standalone hospitals, and vice versa. But, overall, patterns would emerge.
In March, the 2014 healthcare facility guidelines will be available. And, for the first time ever, there will be two volumes—one for hospitals and outpatient facilities, and one for residential health, care, and support facilities.
This is a significant improvement to the guidelines, and one I’m sure will be welcomed by the healthcare, design, and construction industry.
Happy New Year! What’s on your list of resolutions?
Health and organization seem to top most of our lists—and no one more so than healthcare facility owners. What if you could combine both health and organization into a plan that would transform your healthcare facility into a place of well-being? Here are four simple steps to achieve an easy environmental audit that can lead to a new plan for action.
It’s become increasingly clear that the problem of patient safety doesn’t lie solely in the hands of clinicians or frontline staff. Healthcare systems have many underlying conditions that interact in complex ways and may result in adverse events, such as injuries, errors, and infections. These are known as “latent” conditions that contrast the visible “active” failure. These latent conditions (holes and weaknesses) often go undetected.
The end customer defines value.
When using Lean methods on healthcare design projects, the goal is to maximize value for your customer and minimize waste. Designers have to ask the question: “Who is my customer and what do they value?”
The end customer of a healthcare project design is the patient, and that person defines value.
Statistics show that professional caregivers are feeling burnt out. They carry heavy workloads, take few breaks (if any), and are emotionally invested in the health of their patients. In addition to this, many suffer injury on the job.
A recent survey by Nurture by Steelcase found that nearly half of the professional caregivers surveyed have been injured at least once while on the job. Studies also repeatedly show that stress is one of the leading reasons caregivers leave their jobs.
The Institute for Patient-Centered Design, a nonprofit organization established to give patients and families a voice in healthcare facility design, presented its second annual Patient Experience Simulation Lab (PESL) at the 2013 Healthcare Design Conference.
Recently, a prospective client asked some probing questions: Why should we engage clinicians in designing new healthcare facilities if most of their input really won’t change patient outcomes? Shouldn’t the designer already know best practices and bring solutions that have proven worth? What really does matter in healthcare facilities and what is just preference?
Our discussion led to the following as “what matters”:
