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Insights & Solutions

    Blog
    April 2017 Blog

    What message does your Emergency Department (ED) send to patients who step through the doors? If it isn’t a comprehensively welcoming one, you could be increasing patient and family stress levels before they’ve even begun assessment or treatment. As overcrowding in EDs and awareness of the consequences grows within the healthcare industry, it’s crucial to begin taking steps to improve your care environment for staff and patients.

    Blog
    January 2016 Blog

    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.

    Blog
    April 2015 Blog

    Do you involve your physicians and nurses in your design and renovation efforts? If not, you could be missing out on a valuable resource to help you better meet the provisions of healthcare reform, which require high quality and efficient care. Better yet, your staff is already on your payroll—and they know your operations better than anyone else!

    Blog
    March 2015 Blog

    Life in most healthcare organizations passes at a rapid pace. Sounds familiar, right? And in the frenzy of the moment, you probably find that opportunities for your staff to communicate with one another are often overlooked. Yet such internal communication is essential for efficiency, safety, and consistency in patient care. So how do you find that balance without tipping the scale?

    Blog
    March 2015 Blog

    When you think of your organization’s setting, you probably focus on its visual and functional aesthetics. But do you also connect the design approach to the logistics of the communication that occurs in the space? If not, you could be missing some very real opportunities for improvement, since research reveals that the two can be closely linked.

    As the focus in healthcare hones in more and more on that all-essential interaction between physicians and patients, you’ll want to be more aware of how your design choices facilitate such meaningful communication.

    Blog
    April 2016 Blog

    With technology serving up even more state-of-the art advances in patient care than ever before, many hospitals are incorporating these IT improvements into their operations to create a virtual feast of high-quality offerings.

    Take the Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, California, which just opened its doors in October of 2014. The organization spent $284 million to construct a brand new, high-tech facility that incorporates the latest and greatest IT tools and capacities and uses them to achieve the highest-quality standards of care and treatment.

    Blog
    April 2015 Blog

    Antibiotic-resistant infections have become a major public health issue in the United States. In other countries, however, the problem doesn’t appear as severe or as widespread. It’s worth taking a look at what they’re doing differently to see what we can learn from their efforts.

    Blog
    April 2015 Blog

    In today’s demanding healthcare marketplace, your design choices need to do double duty. They need to reflect your mission to prevent the transmission of germs in your facility while also incorporating a patient-centered care approach to help people feel at home in your units.

    But this raises a serious question: Can safety and comfort co-exist? The answer is a resounding “yes.” Many modern facilities are finding creative ways to integrate both missions seamlessly so patients and staff reap the full benefits.

    Blog
    April 2015 Blog

    Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) and other easily transmittable diseases are a serious concern in most facilities today. Implementing some of the latest best practices in your physical environment can help to minimize their impact—and help you get the best outcomes from your efforts.

    When exploring design options that can help to prevent HAI and keep other infectious diseases from spreading, here are three key factors to consider: