Insights & Solutions

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.

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.

As pressure mounts to increase efficiency, improve outcomes, and reduce costs and readmissions, the imperative to provide the right care at the right time in the right place is stronger than ever. While the staggering growth of ED volumes and the increasing complexity of inpatient care create delays and challenge throughput, an answer might be found somewhere in between the ED or outpatient visit and the traditional inpatient admission - The Observation Patient. A new CMS “2-Midnight” guideline that redefines inpatient care and with mounting pressure to reduce readmissions, the observation patient is at the center of many strategies aimed at making healthcare more efficient. 

In 2012, The Center for Health Design received a grant from the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) to develop a standard evidence-based tool for inpatient room design. In a three-phase process, this grant will result in design and evaluation tools for inpatient room design in Medical/Surgical Units, Adult Intensive Care Units (ICU) and Labor Delivery Recovery (LDR) and Maternity Units. The first phase of this project has been completed, resulting in a Beta-test, paper-based version of the Inpatient Room Design Checklist and POE tool for the Med/Surg Room which are shared in this presentation.

In 2011, The Center for Health Design published a glossary of healthcare environment terms and outcome measures commonly used in evidence-based design research for seven key healthcare topics, many of which are tied to CMS reimbursement formulas: health-care associated infections, medical errors, patient falls, patient satisfaction, patient waiting, staff efficiency and staff satisfaction. Learn about the methods used to create the EBD glossary, the work underway to expand the Glossary using the CHD Knowledge Repository, and how you might use this tool in your construction project, during your design education and with EBD research studies.

Want a glimpse into a scary and exciting future? An experienced architect and healthcare leader team up to provide their view of what is coming and how to prepare for it. In an era of rapid, disruptive, transparent change, they show you why you must move beyond today’s best practice to tomorrow’s next practice. They suggest 10 rules that will help you get there.

Positive distractions have been found to reduce stress and improve healthcare outcomes. However, research on this topic is generally lacking in certain pediatric settings. This webinar details recent studies that examined the effects of positive distraction interventions on pediatric patients and their families but used different methods in different settings. The in-depth findings and practical knowledge around the process of implementing two research studies is beneficial to researchers and designers.