Making The Facility Part Of The Solution In The Healthcare Industry

Date: Jun-12-2012For many years now, healthcare organizations have tried to find efficiencies in their supply chain and staff, but most have not considered the facility as part of the solution, according to R. Wayne Estopinal, AIA, ACHA, LEEDAP, President, TEG Architects, The Estopinal Group. The good news is that it is not necessary to build a new facility to achieve the efficiency and productivity gains that TEG Architects considers possible.

A solution provider at the marcus evans National Healthcare CXO Summit Fall 2012, in Dallas, Texas, October 21-23, Estopinal discusses how better designed healthcare facilities can be the answer the industry has been looking for.

How can healthcare facilities become more profitable?

Maintaining profitability, in spite of declining margins, is the biggest issue in the industry today. In our opinion, the only way that healthcare facilities can achieve the patient outcome, staff productivity, efficiency, to satisfy reimbursement metrics, is by utilizing innovative planning and design strategies, and letting facilities become part of the solution. This is a new weapon for successful and dynamic healthcare providers, titled Efficient Design+Productive Care, at TEG planning and design strategy.

What innovative strategies could you share?

We have conducted many years of evidence-based design, research looking at how facilities can add efficiency, and planning and design with innovative clinical solutions coupled with facility metrics to reduce your staffing costs for decades to come. Understanding how a hospital's clinical utilization fluctuates throughout the day and year, we identify opportunities for more efficient departmental designs and adjacencies of departments which are supportive and in many cases diametrically different in functions. Designing departments for their peak capacity is unnecessary, if the same space can be used for different purposes at different parts of the day.

Healthcare construction in the US costs USD 300-600 per square foot. That is capital that does not need to be poured into bricks and mortar or inefficient designs that cause you to spend more on staffing that would be required utilizing TEG's Efficient Design+Productive Care Strategies.

Another way is looking at how departments function and flow, and identifying how staff can be cross-utilized, how adjacencies can improve patient care and outcomes and how clinical capacities can be increased while staffing remains the same or is reduced. Our time and motion studies of multiple hospitals has found that staff spend only 30 per cent of their time on patient care, the rest going on moving between locations and getting the materials they need to provide care. Hospitals must improve on this, but most do not consider the facility as being integral to achieving efficiency and productivity.

If building a new department or building is not an option, can this be achieved easily by reorganizing and renovating an existing facility?

Yes, building a new hospital is not the only way of changing how care is delivered. We have proven that hospitals can achieve a similar impact on the metrics of their clinical departments by implementing these strategies with a clinically-proficient designer during renovations and expansions.

Any final words of wisdom?

The dynamic changes in the healthcare industry must be incorporated into facility planning and design, that must be patterned upon a strategy of efficient design and productive care in every project, regardless of size. Facilities have to be part of the answer and not ignored; approaching healthcare planning and design as it has been performed for 40 years is not the answer. Efficient Design+Productive Care offers you a better way, today.

Courtesy: Medical News Today Note: Any medical information available in this news section is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.