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”:
I recently presented a seminar on converting retail spaces into clinics at the 2013 Healthcare Design Conference. My colleague Dennis Vonasek and I noted how demographic changes, new healthcare legislation, and the after-effects of the Great Recession are creating opportunities to rethink clinic design, including this recent trend in retail conversions.
It isn’t a desirable expansion, yet the number of cancer patients in the United States is growing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancer accounts for approximately 580,000 deaths annually in the U.S., second only to heart disease (approximately 600,000 deaths).
The National Institutes of Health reports these significant facts:
At the beginning of 2014, Jeff Stouffer was named director of HKS Inc.’s (Dallas) healthcare practice. He succeeds Craig Beale, who served as director for 12 years and is continuing with the firm as part of its four-member executive committee and overseeing its international healthcare practice.
It often takes a personal experience to really drive home the key issues of healthcare design. Recently, I accompanied a close family member for outpatient surgery. It was considered outpatient because it involved a less-than-24-hour stay in the hospital. In reality, it was a five-hour surgery and overnight stay—fairly heavy duty, regardless of the classification.
Everyone has gone to their grandparent’s house and found the thermostat at a level close to the tropics. This is a typical response to the changes in our circulation, metabolism, and other systems when we age. These changes make people more sensitive to cold temperature, thus older people typically prefer a warmer environment.
As medicine moves out of the inpatient setting and into the outpatient setting, everything from minor surgical procedures to ambulatory care will need to be supported in a medical office building (MOB). The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) challenge of this new model is to design MOBs with enough flexibility to anticipate future growth and change, right from day one.
In November 2012, Adelante Healthcare, a system of seven federally qualified healthcare facilities serving the Phoenix metropolitan area and surrounding communities, opened the nation’s first LEED-Platinum community health center in Mesa, Ariz.
There are probably a hundred reasons why someone becomes an architect or interior designer. But for those of us who design healthcare spaces and do so especially for children, there’s a unique calling that draws us to the profession and bonds us together: designing spaces that give kids an opportunity to heal.
For years, Chicago hospitals have implemented various projects to conserve energy, including retrofitting countless lamps and exit signs, adding variable frequency drives to pumps and fans, installing occupancy sensors, tuning up boilers, installing pipe insulation, and developing LEED-certified buildings.
The energy savings associated with these activities, as tracked by utility energy efficiency programs, resulted in the ballpark of 241,000,000 kBtus conserved, $3 million in incentives from utility programs received, and $3 million in energy costs saved.
Largely driven by healthcare reform and the cost efficiencies of delivering noncritical healthcare at off-campus settings, the booming medical office building (MOB) market is at an all-time high. Considered to be one of the most sought-after product types in commercial real estate today, MOBs saw record sales in 2012, according to Jones Lang LaSalle’s Healthcare Capital Markets practice reports, which project the same for 2013.
