Understanding Facility Management Improves Design
The design of physical spaces in healthcare facilities of all kinds goes well beyond making patients comfortable and providing a beautiful, functional environment for care. Understanding healthcare operations—how medical professionals and hospital staff do their jobs in the most efficient, effective ways—is critical to designing healthcare environments that improve patient outcomes, patient satisfaction scores, and the hospital’s bottom line. Design for staff satisfaction, including improving workflows and providing a supportive, uplifting environment for work, is another key consideration. Healthcare Design covers all of these issues through in-depth stories from the perspectives of experts in the field.
Learn Design Tips for Infection Control
ADA-compliance for healthcare facilities, cleanability of surfaces and materials, wayfinding, bariatric design, workflows, and myriad other considerations come into play when designing environments that support effective facility management. One of the biggest considerations is infection control. Especially now, as the U.S. healthcare system has shifted its perspective from volume-based to value-based care, reducing infections is particularly important to reduce readmissions and protect federal reimbursements. Healthcare Design regularly talks to facility managers, designers, and architects to understand the latest research and solutions to best mitigate the spread of infection to improve patient outcomes and decrease readmissions.
Because efficiency is so important to keeping costs down and providing the quickest, most beneficial care for patients, Healthcare Design also covers Lean practices in design and construction. Our articles offer detailed examples from real-life projects on how to use Lean design techniques to improve efficiency and reduce waste in healthcare operations and facility management.