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Survey: Healthcare Designers Look To Future Of Medical Facilities In Light Of COVID-19 Pandemic

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The American College of Healthcare Architects (ACHA) has released the key findings of a survey of its members revealing their insights on the future of healthcare architecture and the role of design in the context of the COVID-19 healthcare crisis.

“The extensive experience of ACHA’s healthcare architects gives us unique insights into how this pandemic will shape the future of healthcare,” said Vince Avallone, AIA, ACHA, CASp, LEED AP, the ACHA‘s President. “These findings will influence the design of hospitals and healthcare environments for years to come.”

ACHA Coronavirus Survey Reveals Healthcare Designers’ Role In Addressing The Pandemic

The ACHA survey revealed:

• Over 63% of respondents helped clients evaluate alternative care sites.

• Over 60% of ACHA experts were called on to help healthcare systems increase capacity – 28% created over 100 beds.

• Over 70% of respondents believe design for mass casualty patient surges will be an important element for hospitals in the future.

• Over 80% of respondents thought the telehealth boom would have major impact on facility design.

ACHA surveyed 129 certified professional healthcare designers to reveal lessons learned from COVID-19 and the role of architects in addressing the crisis. Participants represent areas across North America, including many severely affected states such as New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, California, and Pennsylvania.

What Will Happen With Healthcare Facilities After The COVID-19 Pandemic?

The survey also identified the healthcare designers’ concerns about the future:

• How can hospitals be designed so normal operations (such as elective procedures) can continue through a pandemic so as not to disrupt regular patient treatment and create financial shortfalls for providing institutions?

• With the likely implementation of restrictions on patient/visitor traffic flow to control cross-contamination, how will this transform facility intake and entry design?

• How will increased restrictions placed on patient/visitor traffic flow to control cross-contamination transform facility intake and entry design?

• How can architects emphasize building flexible, adaptable facilities that can be easily modified to allow a quick response to changing medical priorities?

• How can healthcare and non-healthcare facilities be designed to handle patient overflow in a more expedient fashion?

ACHA Member Represent The The Top U.S. Healthcare Design Firms

“ACHA certificate holders represent a majority of the nation’s top healthcare design firms,” said Avallone, a Vice President/Senior Medical Planner at SmithGroup. “These results show our continuing commitment to help develop solutions for future healthcare design challenges. ”

For the full results of the survey, click here.

 

Source: Building Design+Construction

Innovation In Healthcare Technology Changing the Game For Hospitals And Healthcare Centers

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Innovation in healthcare technology has changed the rules of the game for hospitals and healthcare centers. It has and continues to do so.

As in other industries, healthcare will be disrupted by advancements in technology like telemedicine and virtualized care programs, which are already rising in popularity with patients.

But how will it impact brick-and-mortar space? Panelists at the recent RealShare Healthcare conference here in Scottsdale, AZ, said that telemedicine will not replace the need for office visits. Panelist say it will not take away from the real estate.

“What it will do is create efficiency” according to Justin Brasell, EVP of healthcare advisory services at Transwestern. “We are missing a lot of people due to inefficiencies. We will continue to see more admissions and I think telehealth is also a differentiator.”

He pointed out that when you are a physician that offers telehealth, it is about hook/add for your patient to come back.

“Telehealth will continue to drive occupancy and real estate but it will change what that real estate looks like. It is a great compliment to real estate and supercharge,” Brasell said.

Brasell is hyper focused on standardizing the physician clinic and piping in fiber for additional technology in the space.

“The future is about standardization and flexibility within the new construction developments,” Brasell said.

Jake Dinner, SVP of development at PMB said that if you take a step back from the layout of the space, the strategy behind the clinics really get into the data and determining the right size for the building, what are the service lines and when are they going to come available etc. so you can plan for future growth.

“We try to use data as much as possible. We work with clinical analysts to determine what needs to go into the building paired with telehealth,” Dinner said. “It is about being strategy based.,”

When asked about risk in telemedicine, Dinner doesn’t see the risk in it and says health systems mitigate risk as much as they can.

“The biggest thing with the evolution of telehealth will be education of the providers,” Dinner said. “The place healthcare technology will be most vulnerable will be the patient data for healthcare systems, which are 200 times more likely to get hacked than any other industry. There has been a huge influx in cyber protection and that impacts real estate because it significantly impacts their bottom line and they are looking to the real estate side to help with that.”

 

Soure: GlobeSt

Medical Concierges, Telehealth, Experience Define Healthcare Real Estate’s Brand-New World

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Around the country, the ways consumers choose to access healthcare is undergoing a seismic shift. And those changes are affecting the locations health providers choose, the space they need and the ways they want to build it.

Patients across all demographics are leaning toward easily accessible, convenient healthcare systems and starting to warm to things like telehealth and digital offerings. Meanwhile, advances in technology are happening at a rapid clip, changing the way healthcare providers now practice medicine and casting uncertainty on how it will be done in the future.

“We really don’t know what these buildings are going to be and look like 10 years from now,” Gilbane Building Co. Vice President Peter Mulcahey said at Bisnow’s National Healthcare East event Wednesday.

“I think, if we all sat here 10 years ago and said, ‘Most of the medicine we want to deliver is through iPad interface and we only want to do critical services within four walls’ …. the reality hadn’t quite set in, otherwise we would have been prepared for where we are right now.”

Medical facility designers could be forgiven for their lack of foresight: The iPad was only announced eight years ago, and back then there were broad questions about whether Steve Jobs’ latest invention had any practical use at all.

As healthcare delivery evolves and more outpatient facilities are developed, Mulcahey said, there needs to be a focus on making sure structures are built to allow for flexibility down the road.

That may mean including more square footage in new or redesigned buildings, he said, to make way for repurposing as needed.

Others said changes to the way hospital services are provided are looming. Just as retail has morphed from physical stores to online, developments in technology will increasingly take healthcare into people’s homes.

“For those whose livelihoods depend on bricks-and-mortar of hospitals, sorry to disappoint you, but the hospital room of the future is likely to be the bedrooms of people across the country,” Partners Continuing Care and Spaulding Rehabilitation Network President David Storto said. “Imagine, for those of you who remember, [1970s TV doctor] Marcus Welby with all the technology that is available today.”

Panelists said treating patients remotely is fast becoming a key element to healthcare. Children’s National Health System in D.C. has been working in telemedicine for two decades, for example, and New York-Presbyterian is one of the largest telehealth providers in the country, according to Chief Strategy Officer Emme Deland.

Still, Deland said, even though telehealth is crucial to supporting patients, the healthcare industry needs to start preparing inpatient facilities for the aging population.

“We’ve done an analysis of what is going to happen over the next 10 years,” Deland told the audience. “If you take into consideration the technology and the population … We will see a slight decrease in the number of discharges, but we will see an increase in the number of patient days because people will be sicker and hospitalized. So we do need to have our inpatient facility [and] we do need to figure out our additional intensive care space.”

These changes are all playing out in healthcare providers’ search for locations, and the type of space they choose.

“You are seeing [a] greater number of practitioners in one space, more one-stop shops, so providing many services under one roof,” said broker Paul Wexler, the head of the Wexler Healthcare Properties Team at Corcoran, who added easy-to-access locations are in high demand.

He and his team recently arranged for a 17K SF outpatient center to go into a former movie theater at 1210 Second Ave. and for a 5K SF obstetrician and gynecologist clinic at 260 East 62nd St., he said.

“As much as retailers are trying to create that experience … healthcare providers are recognizing the same need to create the same experience,” he said. “Everything from the fast and efficient way they move people through the office to the overall experience of checking in and out.”

Mount Sinai Health Real Estate Division Vice President Tom Ahn agreed that type of one-stop shopping option — where you can see a primary care doctor, have blood drawn and get an MRI done in one place — is a major part of his hospital’s expansion.

Earlier this year, Mount Sinai announced a plan to build an 18K SF health center at 55 Hudson Yards, which will serve the companies with offices at the megaproject and the residents who live in the high-end condominiums and rentals there. Ahn said that location will be unique in that it will be a “concierge” health service, which is a path many providers are now taking.

Ultimately, he said, it is about standing out to patients and consumers.

“If we are not convenient and in a good location, providing all those services, we aren’t going to be competitive,” he said. “So that’s an important piece of our strategy, and that’s an important part of a lot of institutions’ strategy right now.”

While carving out that strategy, both in terms of location and service, in the shifting healthcare environment is imperative, panelists said patients will still seek out doctors and practitioners they feel they can trust.

“So [healthcare] is going to be less physical and more digital … A 25-year-old should be using 90% of his healthcare digitally… [for a] 45-year-old that will change, a 65-year-old will use 50% digital,” CityMD CEO Dr. Richard Park said. “AI, technology, that’s all important and needed. But humanity — that is the missing piece of healthcare.”

 

Source:  Bisnow