A Sustainable Model: Creating Facilities with a Future

There is a need to provide care for patients with facilities that are efficient for patients and care givers. Healthcare systems need to develop care models that foster collaborative care. The buildings need to provide for the fact that changes from treatment of acute disorders to chronic diseases compounded with the trend toward preventative care are pushing the population to more frequent visits to the doctor’s office, and more than just an exam room will be required to fulfill what the visitors will be expecting as part of their “patient experience.” And while sustainability from a green perspective will also be of importance in how systems develop buildings that benefit and improve the community they are in, systems need to create facilities that will support, integrate with, and act as an anchor for the communities they provide service to and exist within. While these are not wholly new concepts, the need to create facilities that accomplish all of the above is more of a necessity than ever. To accomplish this healthcare systems will need to look past little one-step-at-a-time planning, and plan in a bigger master plan mentality taking into account more than just the needs of the healthcare system itself.
This article originally appeared in The Academy Journal, published by the AIA Academy of Architecture for Healthcare (14th edition, November 2011).