Facility Requirements for Modern Medicine
New advancements in medical technology require modern facilities to accommodate them. We must renew and replace our hospitals to meet the needs of 21st century medicine, accommodate new innovations, increase privacy for patients and focus on family-centered care.
Advances in medicine dictate that more and more patients are treated at outpatient facilities. Because of this evolution in care, patients in today’s hospitals are more critically ill and therefore require longer hospital stays in single-patient rooms to help facilitate recovery. Single patient rooms are not a luxury, but rather the new national standard of care to ensure patient privacy and comfort.
Today’s healthcare professionals understand that crowded spaces are less effective at preventing the spread of infection, which can increase recovery time. Additionally, modern medicine emphasizes the important role family plays in a patient’s recovery. Because of this, the new standards in hospital design call for family-centered rooms that allow for patients to be close to their loved-ones.
More space is also required to accommodate new technologies and improved standards of care such as modern MRI and Radiation Therapy Rooms, robot technology, lasers and diagnostic bays.
Modern hospital planning seeks to minimize the distance traveled from procedure room to patient room. This is best accomplished by arranging differing uses vertically. Heavier procedural equipment is located on the lowest floors with immediate access to the intensive care units. Upper floors are used for general medicine and post-surgical patients.