August 9, 2018

The Scoop

Providing a Legacy

We are all creating our own legacies and they continue to evolve with every action we take. Meaningful legacies are about sharing what we've learned, making a powerful and lasting contribution by serving a cause greater than your own. They can serve as pathways leading the next generation to continue the mission of one's work. It is likely that you know of someone who daily contributes to their legacy through selfless acts that have a ripple effect that positively impacts the world. We at The Center will be featuring just such an individual at this year's Healthcare Design Expo & Conference. 

Francis Murdock Pitts, FAIA, FACHA, OAA, has been named as the 2018 Changemaker Award recipient by The Center for Health Design’s Board of Directors. Given annually at Healthcare Design Expo & Conference, the award honors individuals or organizations that have demonstrated exceptional ability to change the way healthcare facilities are designed and built, and whose work has had broad impact on the advancement of healthcare design. Frank Pitts, founding partner and president of architecture+, is an advocate, educator, and designer, and is internationally recognized for his impact on the design of healthcare facilities with particular recognition for his groundbreaking work in the planning and design of psychiatric facilities. 

For nearly 40 years, Frank has been a leader in a movement that has resulted in the re-imagination of the psychiatric hospital as a building type; one that confounds the stigma of mental illness and provides examples, lessons, and inspiration for mental health providers and architects throughout the world. He is a pioneer in the understanding and implementation of two interrelated movements impacting hospital design: evidence-based design and therapeutic environments. Recognized as an advocate for broader dissemination of scientific evidence that healthcare environments have a profound influence on patient recovery, he has used this work as a means to fundamentally rethink the environments in which psychiatric and cognitive care, in particular, are provided. His House-Neighborhood-Downtown model for mental health facilities and the creation of smaller cluster-based residential treatment settings within larger inpatient units, are the product of extensive research, collaboration with clinicians, interaction with mental health patients and their families, continuing observation, and imagination about the potential for environments to support healing.

A frequent writer, lecturer, and panelist, he is committed to sharing his expertise with the architectural, medical, and scientific communities. He has spoken about psychiatric care, the relationship between architecture and neuroscience, and healthcare design in the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. 

You can see Frank both at the Changmaker Award Ceremony at Heathcare Design Expo & Conference in Phoenix as well as at our upcoming Behavioral Health Facility Design Workshop in Baltimore. More information on this workshop can be found in the right-hand column of this newsletter.

Speaking of education and community, make sure you get the following events on your calendar including:

• August 23, Webinar: Demystifying Patient Data: Using Medical Records in Healthcare Design Research
• September 13, New York Health Design Insights Networking Event, Steelcase WorkLife Center, NYC
• September 13, EBD Journal Club: The Impact of Operating Room Layout on Circulating Nurse Work Patterns & Flow Disruptions
• September 18, Safety Webinar Day - 3 Design for Patient and Staff Safety Webinars in One Day
• September 20, Webinar: Bridging the Gap: Bringing Therapeutic Design into the Home
• September 21, New Investigator Research Award Submission Deadline
• September 27, Behavioral Health—Strategic Design Innovations that Improve Treatment Outcomes, Safety and the Bottom Line Workshop, Baltimore, MD

As always, let me know what tools and resources are helpful to you, and we'll feature them in our future newsletters.

Be well,

Debra Levin, EDAC
President and CEO

Industry News Briefs
 

Patient Satisfaction, Market Needs Drive Healthcare Renovation Trends

From updated emergency departments to microhospitals and specialty facilities, renovation and construction trends in healthcare focus on meeting patient and market needs while navigating an unpredictable legislative landscape.

At the end of 2017, more than 15,000 healthcare construction projects were underway in the United States, with an expected 3.5 percent growth in healthcare spending in 2018, according the American Institute of Architects.

Among the top renovation/construction trends are emergency department upgrades, micro-hospitals, acute care facilities and upgrades to energy management systems, operating rooms, hospital pharmacies and patient rooms. 
Healthcare Facilities Today, more . . .

Protecting Safety, Preserving Peace: A New Standard in Mental Health Security Screening

No one would contest that the work mental healthcare employees do is demanding – yet plenty of people outside the field would assume it’s only hard mentally and emotionally. What many don’t realize is that it’s also often demanding physically, because of the high risk of injury.

Three-quarters of all workplace assaults occur in the healthcare industry, and workplace violence is even more prevalent in mental health; almost one in five patients admitted to acute psychiatric units may commit an act of violence. The more extreme cases involve contraband like lighters or weapons – knives, guns, razor blades – that are brought into facilities from outside either by patients or their visitors.

It’s not just employees who need to worry about violence within mental health facilities. Patients, too, are at risk if another patient brings in or obtains a weapon or other restricted item while in a facility – and this can create a multiplier effect in which patients try to bring their own weapons in, thinking they need to protect themselves from others. 
EHS Today, more. . .

Hospital Utilization Slows as Healthcare Moves to Cheaper Care Settings

Hospital utilization is slowing down in its growth, according to a recent survey of hospital administrators. The trend underscores the shift across the healthcare system away from high-cost settings toward lower-cost outpatient utilization.

Across inpatient, outpatient, emergency department (ED) and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), acceleration in utilization slowed during the second quarter of 2018 and year over year, according to the survey by Leerink Partners.

Inpatient utilization accelerated 0.7 percent during the quarter, compared to 0.8 percent in the first quarter. ED utilization acceleration dropped from 1.6 percent growth in the first quarter to 0.9 percent in the second.  
Health Exec, more . . .