Insights & Solutions

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.  

Toward a Framework for Designing Person-Centered Mental Health Interiors for Veterans, Journal of Interior Design, DOI: 10.1111/joid.12095

Inside you will learn about: why behavioral health facilities have very different design requirements than general hospitals; how different areas of a behavioral health unit have different safety needs that influence design choices; and which types of safety measures and products should be incorporated into behavioral health units.

Built environment strategies can help healthcare organizations and communities promote healthy living, reduce obesity, and prevent chronic disease. Given the increasing focus on community health and preventive medicine, it is important that healthcare organizations and the communities they serve incorporate built environment strategies that result in healthy behavior.

With support from the Kresge Foundation, The Center for Health Design has developed a standardized Community Health Center Facility Evaluation tool that supports design for population health. The tool is intended to support both design and post-occupancy evaluation of built projects with respect to population health goals.

This tool is meant to support a universal design approach to environments for aging populations. 

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.

This Clinic Design Post Occupancy Evaluation Toolkit is self-administered and provides a way to collect a variety of data on the physical enviornment, subjective perception of users, and objective healthcare outcomes.

Behavioral health settings guided by strict safety design measures often result in spaces that are stark, plain, and isolated - potentially exacerbating environmental stressors and escalating already difficult patient situations. Acute care emergency settings have a particular set of challenges as EDs are predicting increased visits from behavioral health patients. Faced with the challenge of designing a behavioral health care setting in the Emergency Department at UnityPoint Health in Rock Island, IL, the project team hypothesized that the creation of a Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) with a “Living Room Concept” would provide a higher quality of care to patients while assisting in the staff’s ability to quickly consult and treat a diverse set of patients entering the ED. 

Developed through extensive review of research, surveys, site tests, and review and validation by expert advisory council members, this standard set of evidence-based design checklists and post-occupancy evaluation (POE) tools can be used by interior designers to apply research to healthcare design projects and to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of three types of hospital patient rooms: adult medical-surgical, adult intensive care, and maternity care.