Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning (HVAC) & Plumbing
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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January 2016∘
Tool ∘
This tool provides healthcare designers and professionals with ideas on how to address the issue of hand hygiene and infection control in facility design.
January 2016∘
Design Strategies ∘
A clean healthcare environment helps improve an organization’s infection prevention efforts, patient satisfaction, and bottom-line. The built environment design constitutes a key component of a systems approach to keeping the healthcare environment clean.
August 2015∘
Tool ∘
This tool provides healthcare designers and professionals with ideas on how to improve nurse-patient communication through facility design.
September 2012∘
EDAC Advocate Firm Project ∘
The goal of this project was to reduce noise and distractions in the patient care environment in the design of a new adult cardiac ICU.
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.
Learn about: the key noise issues facing the industry today, design strategies that can be implemented to mitigate noise, the problems with spaces that are too quiet.
February 2018∘
Tool ∘
Design interventions to improve well-being for patients with behavioral and mental health (BMH) conditions will often have impacts on other populations, as well (e.g., staff, visitors, non-BMH patients who use the same facility). This tool will help you consider those broader impacts and incorporate them into an evidence-based process for a universal design approach.
February 2018∘
Interview ∘
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.
Pati, D., Pati, S., & Harvey Jr, T. E. (2016). Security implications of physical design attributes in the emergency department. HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 9(4), 50-63.
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.
