As healthcare is disrupted and systems grapple with cash flow challenges and market changes, traditional long-term facility plans are frequently discarded as conditions render them obsolete.
Fortunately, a new approach allows healthcare systems to plan intelligently for the future. Instead of the static document-of-old focused on basic site planning, today’s facility master plans map all the changing variables that impact an organization’s real estate footprint over time. They provide a roadmap with strategies for a range of possible futures, including offramps that allow systems to take measured steps and delay further investment while still remaining fully functional.
Renovate, Pivot or Build?
Today's interactive facility master plans also clarify whether—and when—to renovate, pivot or build, or a combination of all three. Working with leading institutions like Massachusetts General Hospital, NYU Langone Health, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the University of Washington Medical Center on their plans, we’ve developed several strategies which can help organizations take the right path forward.
Oftentimes, this results in a recommendation to take these five steps:
Increase Efficiency of Existing Space
Anticipate Change
Weigh Need
and Urgency
Decide How
and Where
to Distribute Capital
Determine When Building is the Only Option
Master plans start with operational and financial analysis, uncovering ways to make better use of existing resources. Recently, Wenatchee Valley Hospital in Wenatchee, WA, was having trouble reconciling space with demand, with surgeons reporting there were not enough operating rooms.
Increase Efficiency of Existing Space
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Because long-term master plans take into account both near- and far-term variables, they can help organizations more accurately determine when, and if, expansion makes sense.
Weigh Need and Urgency
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For organizations that have capital but aren’t sure how to distribute it, a strategic master plan can help decide who gets the funds, and when, based on an overarching, systemwide view.
Decide How and Where to Distribute Capital
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Even with a long-term plan, sometimes building new facilities is the only option—for example, when efficiency has been squeezed from all existing spaces, a regulatory event renders a space ineligible for its intended function, or if current facilities can’t support new technologies and treatments.
Determine When Building is the Only Option
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Increased Utilization
To make better use of real estate within the existing hospital, we performed an analysis that identified underutilized office space that could be repurposed for clinical functions.
Seismic Considerations
An innovative structural system with special expansion joints between buildings allows each to move independently—up to 42 inches—during a seismic event.
Patient Room
The new bed tower can flex in acuity to accommodate complex scenarios such as pandemics and mass casualty events, and features unique structural elements that help guard against earthquakes.
Bed Towers
Since the hospital’s existing facility could not be renovated to meet the updated seismic requirements for acute patient care, we recommended the decommissioned bed tower be repurposed for administrative and clinical-support functions that did not require the same stringent requirements.
As healthcare designers, we’re stewards of our clients’ precious resources, which means it’s more important than ever to help them do more with less. Here, we outline ways to minimize costs without compromising patient or staff experience.
To consolidate services and ensure responsible stewardship, we worked with UC Davis on solutions for on-campus ambulatory care.
Design and delivery solutions can help mitigate financial risk when it comes to healthcare projects. Tune in as we discuss strategies to reduce costs in healthcare construction.
We discuss three ways technology impacts patients and staff, and what it means for the design of healthcare environments.
We assessed the facility’s utilization through data analysis and in-depth observational studies and found that rather than lacking ORs, the hospital lacked nurses, with staffing levels in the PACU as the primary bottleneck. We recommended staffing up in the short term, then increasing operating hours. We also provided the organization with a facilities plan to determine when and how to add more ORs should the need for expansion arise in the future.
Addressing a Building’s Midlife Crisis
Listen to NBBJ's Molly Wolf talk about the importance of data-informed decision-making on a recent episode of our podcast, Uplift.
PeaceHealth was in the process of bringing three systems together under one umbrella. In response, we performed an analysis of the organization’s assets and how they were being utilized, then dove into each system to align our findings to their strategic plan and capital outlay. Doing so allowed PeaceHealth to make informed real estate decisions based on growth, current and future needs and ROI.
CommonSpirit Health in Folsom, CA, was weighing the option to build now or in the future. We established a projected patient volume baseline, then added factors like insurance coverage, demographic changes, disease prevalence, technologies, readmissions and care management, and divided results into five-year increments. The findings revealed that in just ten years, CommonSpirit Health would need more capacity in the area, which triggered a decision to build now instead of wait.
Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, CA, needed to build a new bed tower to meet updated seismic requirements. To maximize ROI, we focused on high-revenue-generating service lines and spaces to support updated care models, and found better uses for the organization’s existing facility to give it an additional life expectancy of up to 75 years.
The Patient Room Calculator factors in metrics such as room size, staffing ratios and demand to increase operational efficiency.
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