Experts
John Kouletsis, a prominent healthcare planning and design expert, was, prior to his retirement, the Vice President, Planning and Design, National Facilities Services at Kaiser Permanente. For 24 years John served as Kaiser Permanente’s “chief architect” and managed a staff of 30 healthcare planners, designers, operations experts, and clinicians. John was responsible for assuring that all Kaiser Permanente hospitals and medical offices across the country were built and maintained with a consistent level of quality, innovation and affordability. In collaboration with hundreds of frontline health care professionals, planners, architects, and others, John created guidelines that established Kaiser Permanente as one of the earliest and foremost proponents of both evidence-based design and safety-by-design.
John developed the first inpatient and outpatient room templates for Kaiser Permanente and he managed the development of the “templated” hospital, a site-adapt inpatient design that allowed Kaiser Permanente to significantly reduce the time it takes to bring new hospitals to market, while still allowing local project teams to adjust the design to accommodate local conditions.
While at Kaiser Permanente, John was one of the founders and executive sponsors of the Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center, a unique living laboratory where design ideas are tested and solutions are developed in a hands-on, mocked-up clinical environment. He also collaborated with the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the Department of Defense, Defense Health Agency on a series of initiatives including BIM standards, post-occupancy evaluations and design excellence for health care facilities.
John served on the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects Board of Directors for five years (2010-2014), serving as the Assistant Treasurer, the Treasurer, the Vice President, the President, and ex officio.
John was appointed to serve the 2015-2017 term as a member of the California State Building Standards Commission, Health Facilities Committee representing Primary Care/Specialty Care.
He continues his work to benefit the healthcare design community through his work on the Executive Committee of the Steering Committee of the Facility Guidelines Institute which produces the well known “Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals, Outpatient, and Residential Facilities.” He is one of two Vice Chairs of the 2022 edition of the Guidelines and remains active in discussions about innovation, cost, and patient focus in the healthcare sector.