Insights & Solutions

Learn about: how a unit redesign for UW Health will serve as a prototype for future redesign projects, why the new unit must be flexible to respond to a variety of staff and patient needs, and how a multidisciplinary team used a range of observational findings and current literature to inform the overall design process.

This summary compiles the executive summaries of six Safety Risk Assessment Issue Briefs to provide a high-level overview of the latent conditions of the built environment and their related design categories found in the CHD SRA toolkit.

This webinar introduces the new, easier to use, online interface for The Center’s Safety Risk Assessment (SRA) toolkit, a proactive and systematic approach to designing and renovating healthcare facilities for safety. Originally developed through research and consensus to support the requirements of the FGI Guidelines, The Center's research team will walk you through the why, what, and how of each part of the online SRA toolkit illustrating features with vignettes gathered from the testing process.  

Learn about: why the needs of older people are often overlooked, how universal design can support people as they age, how universal design also benefits people of varying abilities and generations, and the need for designers to think about functionality in new and existing spaces.

Healthcare is provided in a variety of settings, from a person’s home to outpatient clinics, to the hospital. While the settings and specific design elements may differ across the continuum of care, the objectives of safety, efficiency, satisfaction, and high quality care remain constant. This set of interactive diagrams provides a link between the evidence base, design strategies, and desired outcomes – in a visually intuitive and actionable format.

The healthcare community has recently come clean on an important fact: patient perception of your hospital’s cleanliness may impact their overall view of your facility much more than you’d think.

The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey provides patients an important avenue through which to share their views of your hospital’s cleaning practices. Many patients will also use their impression of your physical environment’s look and cleanliness to judge the quality of care they receive.

As part of the noise toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about how excessive noise can negatively impact patients and staff in the hospital environment, ways to improve patients’ perception of sound, and low-cost, medium-cost, and high-cost design strategies that can reduce noise.

HCAHPS scores related to noise in the hospital environment are typically among the lowest. Acoustic intervention packages implemented by healthcare organizations are often a combination of built environment and operational measures.  

The following are compiled from research literature, case studies, interviews, and other materials to provide an overview on the topic of noise.