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Insights & Solutions

Get the latest trends, tools, and resources for improving healthcare environments here. Browse our many free and members-only resources, including research reports and issue briefs, interviews, case studies, design strategies, lessons learned, key point summaries, and webinars.

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Tool

Ambulatory Care Center Design Tool

December 2015 ∘ Tool

This Ambulatory Care Center Design Tool (ACCDT), developed by Dr. Anjali Joseph and Dr. Zahra Zamani from Clemson University in collaboration with The Center for Health Design (CHD), builds upon a series of papers, best practice case studies and in-depth literature reviews conducted by CHD as well as CHD's Clinic Design Post-Occupancy Evaluation Toolkit – Tool 2 Audit of Physical Environment with additions from a thesis by Crews (2013). The tool supports design teams in making key design decisions about ambulatory care centers linked to evidence based design goals and principles.
Tool

Interactive Design Diagrams
June 2018 ∘ Tool

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.
Tool

Clinic Design Post-Occupancy Evaluation Toolkit (PDF version)
November 2015 ∘ Tool

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.
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Executive Summary

Clean Hands Save Lives: A Systems Approach to Improving Hand Hygiene
April 2015 ∘ Executive Summary

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.
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Issue Brief

Clean Hands Save Lives: A Systems Approach to Improving Hand Hygiene
April 2015 ∘ Issue Brief

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.
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Project Brief

New Medical Center Takes a Comprehensive Approach to Healthcare
August 2015 ∘ Project Brief

Learn about: how the Princeton HealthCare System created a comprehensive campus to meet an array of medical and wellness needs for multiple generations, evidence-based design principles that were incorporated into the built environment, and how the new facility is positioned to respond to the changing healthcare field.
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Webinar

Healthy Soundscapes: Bridging the Gaps between Engineering, Architecture and Medicine
September 2014 ∘ Webinar

Healthy soundscapes are paramount to the missions of hospitals: patients need to sleep and heal without unnecessary environmental stressors; staff, patients, and family need to communicate accurately but privately; staff need to be able to localize alarms and calls for help. There is growing research evidence of the potentially negative effects of poor soundscapes on hospital occupants. Explore recent findings from the Healthcare Acoustics Research Team (HART), an international collaboration of specialists in architecture, engineering, medicine, nursing, and psychology. 
Webinar

Designing the Future of Integrated Behavioral Health
August 2014 ∘ Webinar

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. 
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Webinar

Healthcare Reform and Quality Care Improvement: Opportunities for Designers and Facility Managers
August 2014 ∘ Webinar

Enactment of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is transforming just about every aspect of healthcare delivery in order to achieve the Triple Aim goals of better care, healthier people and communities and affordable care. One of the law’s most striking and fundamental changes is the shift in reimbursement practices – moving volume to value. This presentation provides an overview of the design team implications of the ACA, such as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of the Healthcare Providers and Systems survey and the Partnership for Patients program. Learn how architects, designers and facility managers can contribute to solutions that achieve these outcomes.
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Webinar

Designing the Evidence-Based Hospital: Ways to Strengthen Inpatient Performance Through Facility Innovation
April 2014 ∘ Webinar

The webinar examines the latest strategies to use evidence-based design to strengthen hospital performance. Understand the basics of evidence-based design and the role that the built environment plays in improving the quality of care for patients and families, and how hospitals, architects and contractors can work together to evaluate, prioritize and apply design research in future projects.