Healthcare Trends: Outpatient facilities meet needs by design

More and more patients demand outpatient care rather than a hospital stay, according to a publication focused on healthcare trends. Well-designed facilities meet this need while using cost-effective construction, ease in renovation, and appeal to patients.

Designers of outpatient facilities can control construction costs while maintaining quality. For one Washington state clinic, the design firm used a tilt-up concrete construction, in the manner of building large stores and warehouses. This decision saved the firm thousands of dollars in labor costs. Yet the interior did not resemble a warehouse. It used grooved concrete panels, a glass curtain wall, and real wood as well as wood-pattern flooring to create an engaging space for patients and healthcare workers.

Outpatient facilities undergo frequent renovations so that they can change the way they use their spaces. Employing a modular design is one way to ease renovation hassles. For one facility in the Midwest, architects used the patient exam room, with standard dimensions, as the basic design unit. They designed other spaces in the facility as some multiple of the exam room’s square footage. For instance, a utility room was half the size of an exam room. So, in the future, unused utility rooms could easily be combined to become exam rooms.

Forget dreary waiting rooms. Outpatient lobbies can make patients feel at home, including comfortable stations for their laptop computers and interactive entertainment in children’s waiting areas. When patients and visitors can rearrange the furniture, they wait more comfortably.

Before you build an outpatient facility, consult with a creative partner with experience in healthcare. Please contact us.