Insights & Solutions

As part of the ED throughput toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about ED metrics related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, innovative strategies to reduce crowding, minimize wait times, and maximize care quality in the Emergency Department, and how the design of the built environment in the Emergency Department can best support strategies for improved throughput.

As part of the patient-centered medical home toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about patient-centered medical home (PCMH) principles, implementation, and evaluation, operational strategies supporting the principles of PCMH, and environmental design features of PCMH found in recent design and research publications.

As part of the cleanliness toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about how to identify the significant impact of environmental cleanliness on multiple healthcare outcomes, different methods used to measure cleanliness, and a summary of key strategies to improve cleanliness through environmental design, operational and policy changes, and education of personnel.

As part of the infection prevention toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about the importance of hand hygiene in improving safety, quality, and economic impact, a systems approach to hand hygiene that integrates environmental, operational, and personal factors for infection prevention, and new, effective, and easy-to-implement hand hygiene measures.

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.

As part of the communication toolbox, in this issue brief you will learn about elements of the built environment that improve nurse-patient communication, design interventions that could improve nurse-patient communication as found in the literature and how to ask better questions surrounding this critical relationship during your next project.