3 Lessons on How to Future Proof Your Hospitals
At the last medical real estate conference I attended the notion of making a hospital adaptable for new technology and space requirements was a reoccurring phrase from the major health systems’ vice presidents in attendance. They didn’t want a static “shell” for a building, but rather a system that could be flexible and accommodate multiple types of equipment.
A financial goal of every hospital is to stay profitable. Often this occurs on a tight budget. That is why space management is crucial: making a seamless transition from initial room and department design to future flexible designs.
Lesson 1: Making Current Space Adaptable for Future Needs:
While a very focused design serves well for the short term, an adaptable design plays well for the long term. Creating optimal medical office building flexibility should be on the mind of every hospital leader involved in the construction process. This can be done with evidence-based designs or through developing innovative ways to manage and care for space requirements. With wireless technologies merging with design layout, having the hospitals IT group involved in the design process could prove useful.
Lesson 2: Thinking for the Future Now:
When a hospital was drawing up plans for new patient rooms, they had a different initial idea than what they knew the rooms’ roles would be down the road. That is why they increased the rooms’ infrastructure, gas and vacuum capacity for additional power, data, and equipment upgrades when the rooms would convert to intensive care unit (ICU) purposes. By implementing this concept early in the design process costs were a fraction of what they would have been to convert the rooms after build out. Also, by implementing conversion features now, there is no downtime, loss in revenue, or disruption in department operations as a future conversion may have led to.
Lesson 3: Utilizing All Your Space:
Saint Luke Health System executives needed a temporary location until their medical office building for administration was completed. Saint Luke’s Hospital at the Vintage had been recently built and since the hospital didn’t have to use all patient beds, they used a wing to house the administration office. This proved invaluable as administrative staff saw first hand how the hospital ran itself and increased their understanding of workflow and operations.
Too many times hospitals are designed around an idealistic picture while it should be around stringent flow, function, and cost. Ask yourself; what future uses could this room have and adjust the best way you see fit to maximize versatility.
Your Healthcare Real Estate Expert
Jim Ellis
“How to future-proof your hospital”?
Cut the anchor!
Too often we use ‘the way we’ve always done it’ or evidence-based design (when the data behind the evidence is 10 years old) as drivers for designing new facilities. We should never throw out precedent just for the sake of doing so, but at the same time precedent is just the way things were done in the past, not the REASON they were done that way!
Some think futurecasting requires tarot cards, or a crystal ball, or super-genius IQ, however there are elements of the future that we all know, today, but too often don’t effectively incorporate into facility plans. Take two ‘slow-ptich’ examples, demographics and reimbursement.
Demographics:
Your median patient will get older… quite a bit older… over the next 20 years. Which facility design elements or departments are in the heaviest demand (per capita) from your older patients? Cath lab? G.I.? Interventional radiology? Cardiac? Physical rehab? Guess what, you should probably plan that these departments will need to grow (either within your facility or without) even if you’re cutting the ribbon on a brand new building, today.
Reimbursement:
Has there been wild cycling of reimbursement rates… low one year and then high the next? No. Reimbursement for most procedures has been plummeting… a seemingly never ending plunge that makes your stomach flutter. Particularly in those areas where further reimbursement cuts are already in the budgetary crosshairs (this means you, radiology), additional effort must be paid to efficiency and throughput. For radiology, this is just one element of a triple-threat (see ‘demographics’ above for threat #2, and #3 being that it came of age as a cash-cow and has *never*, until recently, had to work to pay its own way… the result is institutionalized inefficiencies).
Futureproofing your hospital has to do with taking the very latest information you have about your patients, your docs, your staff, your entire operation, looking through the recent history for trend lines that will help you project forward. Overlay these trend lines with high-probability shifts in the future, and you’ll paint for yourself a good picture of where you might want to be in 5, 10, or 15 years.
Tobias Gilk
Great points Tobias. As far as departments in demand the big three that hospitals seem to be specifically expecting to grow in are cardiology, oncology and orthopedics. No surprise given the aging baby boomers and need for specialty services.