Morgan Crowder (Image credit: Courtesy of Gensler)
In this series, Healthcare Design asks leading healthcare design professionals, firms, and owners to tell us what has their attention and share their ideas on the subject.
Morgan Crowder is Dallas healthcare practice area leader and healthcare architect for global architecture, design, and planning firm Gensler.
Here, she shares her thoughts on the future of inpatient care, healthcare campus security, and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
1. Are hospitals bracing for the wrong generation?
There’s a looming belief in the industry that inpatient care will be directly affected as baby boomers age out of the system. Specifically, the concern is that with a comparatively smaller Gen X population following behind, hospitals will see a drop in demand across the board. This includes overall hospital volume, inpatient care, and all specialty and general hospital services.
But what’s around the corner is even more interesting: millennials. The most populated and reportedly unhealthy generation is poised to place the highest strain on inpatient services as they age into their 60s and beyond. According to a Forbes article “Millennials: The Most Unhealthy Generation At Work,” published in December 2019, millennials are considered the unhealthiest generation in the workplace today, with rising rates of physical and mental health issues. The “cliff” might just be a drip before an unprecedented spike in acute care needs.
2. How millennials could reshape healthcare
Millennials are aging into a complex future. Statistically more sedentary, more anxious, and more burdened with chronic conditions than previous generations, this group could dramatically reshape inpatient care demands. A 2019 study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found that millennials have significantly higher rates of nearly every major health condition, including depression, Type 2 diabetes, and hypertension, than Gen X did at the same age. The outcome is a generation that may need more care earlier and for longer.
For healthcare designers, this means thinking now about adaptable spaces that can accommodate both immediate and long-term changes in services. This could include an emergency department that must quickly ramp up during a sudden influx of patients, or clinic spaces reconfigured to manage a growing number of cardiac patients. Adaptability needs to operate on two levels: in the short term, the ability to change something in the moment to handle urgent demand, and in the long term, the capacity to expand or repurpose areas to manage sustained increase in patient volume. Designing with adaptability in mind ensures hospitals can scale up to meet this eventual demand without reverting to massive, inefficient institutions.
3. Designing for physical threats at hospitals
Security has moved from a background concern to a central challenge, especially in healthcare. This shift is being driven by a complex mix of societal factors, including growing concerns around public safety, evolving behavioral health needs, and an increased awareness of vulnerabilities in traditionally open and accessible environments. At the Association of Medical Facility Professionals North Texas Annual Healthcare Summit in Plano, Texas, in May 2025, the threat of an active shooter was identified as one of the biggest fears among healthcare staff and leadership.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are working to create safer environments without compromising patient dignity or the healing process. This includes training clinical staff and security personnel, outlining better lockdown procedures, and rethinking spatial adjacencies to support rapid response and layered security. One example is the consolidation of entrances to allow for more intensive monitoring. In a recent case, a hospital converted multiple badge-access staff entrances to exit-only doors, improving security for both staff and patients.
Reducing the number of entry points enables more thorough screening of everyone entering the facility. Another measure involves requiring all security personnel to complete active shooter response training, including escalation tactics specifically designed for situations involving individuals with mental health challenges.
4. Moving target: Technology in healthcare
Clients want their campuses to be “future-proof,” but what exactly does that mean when technology is evolving faster than capital budgets can keep up? It is often a challenge to allocate funds for the “technology bucket” because it is difficult to predict what technologies that budget should cover 15 to 20 years from now. As designers, we’re constantly navigating how to create spaces that are flexible enough to adapt to tools and systems that haven’t been invented yet and might be obsolete just as quickly as they arrive.
Working with futurists and equipment specialists can help to ensure project teams are on the forefront of what’s being developed. It’s important to have open conversations with clients about their day-to-day needs and how to create efficient work environments right now while still planning for the future. Designing to accommodate future technology is mainly about infrastructure, since equipment needs to drive infrastructure requirements, but this is an ongoing area of investigation as many aspects remain unknown.
5. Addressing the impacts of energy-intensive technology
With the rise of artificial intelligence robotics, and digital patient data, healthcare is becoming one of the most energy-intensive industries. Hospitals are now running on ecosystems of technology that rely on robust power and secure data infrastructure. The demand is outpacing what many systems and even the broader grid can manage. Data centers are being built faster than ever, but there still aren’t enough to meet the overall demand.
As healthcare expands its Internet of Things, embraces more virtual education, and incorporates increasingly advanced robotics, the industry will need to rethink how to support these shifts structurally, sustainably, and securely. This means emphasizing design solutions that improve the patient experience by bringing services directly to patients rather than siloing them within the hospital. It also involves creating environments that streamline workflows for both staff and patients, allowing the building itself to support a more efficient operation and better overall patient experience.
Want to share your Top 5? Contact Managing Editor Tracey Walker at [email protected] for submission instructions.
