A lot has changed since the concept of patient-centered care was first introduced several decades ago. The old definition of patient-centered care used to be bringing care of the patient to the bedside. That model ― which included decentralizing diagnostic equipment, pharmacies, and supply rooms to each inpatient floor ― proved too costly both from a facility and labor perspective. Today, the patient-centered care concept has moved to a relationship-based care model focused on orienting a health care organization around the preferences and needs of patients with the intention of improving the patient’s satisfaction with care and improving his or her clinical outcome. Today, the definition has also been expanded to include family members and is often referred to as the patient- and family-centered care (PFCC) model.
Current Trends
Read about current trends in utilization, medical practice, care delivery, and regulations and their facility impact.
What’s New in Radiology? Highlights of the RSNA 2015 Annual Meeting
The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in late November 2015 is the premier scientific and educational meeting that brings together radiologists, oncologists, physicists, radiological technologists, and allied healthcare professionals from around the world. This meeting used to be dominated by “heavy metal” with flashy introductions of new imaging modalities. Today, there is more emphasis on smaller, light-weight, mobile, and more versatile equipment, along with new software enhancements for existing equipment to provide better clinical data and workflow productivity.
Evidence Grows That Hospital Design Can Improve Outcomes
An article in the Harvard Business Review reports that hospital design can improve clinical outcomes as well as patient satisfaction. In fact, research continues to show that specific design concepts can prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infections, reduce patient pain, and shorten hospital stays. It seems obvious that newly designed hospitals with hotel-like amenities will increase patient satisfaction. But researchers are now actually measuring before and after costs and outcomes of these newly designed hospitals.
Ten Facility Planning Trends for 2015
The U.S. healthcare industry is in a crisis with healthcare reform and new financial incentives, constant demands for technology adoption and deployment, rising turf wars among specialists, an intense focus on patient safety, and aging physical plants. The following ten healthcare facility planning trends affect how new or renovated healthcare facilities are planned, designed, financed, and built.
New International Property Measurement Standard for Office Buildings
As the result of a global effort to establish a uniform method of measuring property worldwide, a new international property measurement standard for office buildings — IPMS for Office Buildings — has been created. The IPMS for Office Buildings is compatible with, and complements, Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International’s current office standard Office Buildings: Standard Methods of Measurement (ANSI/BOMA Z65.1—2010). Historically, property has been measured differently throughout the world. According to research by global property firm JLL, depending on the standard used, the area quoted in different markets for an equivalent building could vary by as much as 24 percent. These inconsistencies have led to confusion in markets, and even led businesses to develop their own costly processes for measuring and benchmarking property assets. The work to create the IPMS for Office Buildings was spearheaded by a coalition of more than 50 professional organizations, including BOMA International, and was produced following global consultation by a team of 18 independent industry experts. The IPMS for Office Buildings document can be found at the IPMS website.
Substerile Rooms No Longer Advised for the Surgical Suite
In the traditional surgery suite design, operating rooms are grouped around a “sterile core” — from which case carts and sterile supplies are retrieved by the circulating nurse and taken into the operating rooms in preparation for surgery. A “substerile” room was typically placed between two operating rooms to provide “flash” or emergent sterilization of unwrapped items to be used immediately in the operating room. The sterile core often housed a sterilizer as well. Because the items were sterilized in open baskets that could be contaminated by improper handling and exposure during transport, the substerile rooms were placed as close as possible to the operating rooms and the sterile core was considered a restricted area.