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Consumer Perceptions of The Healthcare Environment -- An Investigation to Determine What Matters
The Picker Institute
10 pages
The Center for Health Design, 1998

Executive Summary

Each of us can relate to our own stories where our activities, thoughts, or purpose were impacted by the external environment. The environment around us can set a mood, create a barrier, provide a distraction, give us pleasure or cause us harm. Yet, it is surprising to find that little systematic research has been done examining the impact of the healthcare environment on its consumers--patients, family members and clinicians. How these consumers are impacted by the physical or built environment is poorly understood. Heretofore, we have not had answers to questions such as: What do patients notice in the physical environment when they go to a doctor's office, a hospital, or a nursing home? What stands out in their minds? What gets in the way? What matters most to them? What impact does the built environment have on them? To answer these questions, The Center for Health Design and The Picker Institute went directly to the primary source.

Throughout healthcare, patients and family members are increasingly recognized as the "experts" about the subjective quality of their experience--what matters, what makes them feel better, and what they need to help them recover, heal, and adapt to significant changes in their lives. Because they are truly the only individuals who can tell us this information, as we work to create "life-enhancing" environments in healthcare, we must understand how patients and their families experience those environments and what it is about them that matters to them most.

A report on the first phase of the project to explore consumer perceptions about the built environment of healthcare and a summary of the project's preliminary findings was published in 1998. The "Healthcare Design Action Kit," a set of assessment tools was also developed as result of this project.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Participating Organizations
Technical Advisory Groups
Organization of the Project
Phase I: Methods
Phase II: Findings
Discussion of Phase I Findings: What Matters Most to Consumers
Appendix A: Industry Advisory Group Participants
Appendix B: Environmental Quality Work Group Participants
Appendix C: Host Institutions
Appendix D: Sample Moderator Guide Questions/Acute Care
Project References

Ordering Information

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Sponsors

Anonymous Donor
Armstrong World Industries, Inc.
Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation, Inc.
Hewlett-Packard
HIll-Rom Company, Inc.
Marquette/Corometrics/Q.M.I.
Milcare
The Center for Health Design, Inc.
The Picker Institute
Wilsonart International

A funding contribution was also made by the International Interior Design Association/Healthcare Forum and Carnegie Fabrics to further the pursuit of quality research in the healthcare marketplace.