While other industries streamline their processes to become more productive over time, the building industry has faced a decrease in productivity, especially during the construction phase. This is especially true with healthcare facilities, which are becoming increasingly more expensive to build. In fact, by some calculations, the quantity of work constituting waste on a typical healthcare project may approach 50% of the total work performed.
The time has come once again here in the HEALTHCARE DESIGN offices to begin the search for our new class of the Most Influential People in Healthcare Design.
To get started, we’re going to need your help. We’ve opened up nominations to the public so we can hear from you, our readers, about who you think are the best architects, interior designers, facility managers, and researchers out there today.
Each year, HEALTHCARE DESIGN recognizes the Most Influential People in Healthcare Design.
In the first part of this three-part series, we explored the constraints and opportunities during the healthcare sector’s transition to accountable care organizations (ACOs).
If you are immersed in the evidence-based design process, then you know that a connection to nature is at the core of how the design of the built environment impacts the reduction of stress/pain and replenishes the soul.
This story starts with a veteran who liked to garden.
"The new hospital will be a safe, welcoming, patient-centered healing environment that serves as a sustainable community resource for Dallas County. It will promote excellence in clinical care, teaching, and research in a technologically advanced, easily accessible environment.”
If there was a top-10 list of overused terms, “paradigm shift” would surely be on it. When a company or organization confronts major change, it’s often called a paradigm shift. But how often does this mean a transformation of the rules of the game? The architecture/engineering/construction (AEC) industry has no worries on this score—it truly is undergoing a paradigm shift.
Chapels are not at all unusual in healthcare facilities—you will find them in facilities of every size. But it is not often that the chapel is the visual and conceptual center of the facility’s design, observable from nearly every public space on the first floor and symbolizing the spiritually centered care throughout the hospital. That was one of the guiding principles for the Middle Tennessee Medical Center, which is located in historic Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and opened in October 2010.
As healthcare facilities today strive to create more responsive and needs-specific environments, innovative furniture and design techniques can play a transformative role. Facilities are finding that by converting traditionally stark, clinical interiors into functional, aesthetic, and positive spaces, they can improve patient satisfaction, facilitate healing, enhance visitor comfort, and even increase employee productivity.
The annual HEALTHCARE DESIGN/Healthcare Building Ideas Corporate Profiles and Rankings supplement offers results of our survey of architecture, engineering, and construction firms working in healthcare today.
As a bonus to the rankings published in the July issue of HEALTHCARE DESIGN magazine, this online content includes an analysis of the results and charts documenting 2010 business activity. Please click on the PDF link below to download the enhanced version of the special supplement.
