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34 Medical Construction & Design | JA N UA RY/ F EBRUA RY 2018 | MCDM AG.COM BY JASON CARNEY When it comes to healthcare delivery in the U.S., pressure for change is constant. Whether it's shifting federal and state regulations, changing technol- ogy, the burden to control costs and improve outcomes, new de- livery of care models or market competition driven by patients' evolving preferences, forces of change never stop pushing the healthcare industry in new directions. Architects, designers and builders of healthcare spaces have to address these forces as they continue to rethink how healthcare settings are designed and located. Today's emergency departments and lower-acuity inpatient facilities, microhospitals and medical buildings must be designed in central locations convenient and accessible by transporta- tion to respond to patients' evolving preferences for where and how they are treated. The following are some of the biggest trends driving healthcare design in 2018: TREND #1 Behavioral health drives emergency department reconfi gurations Refl ecting both the national opioid-abuse crisis and rising awareness of mental health conditions, hospitals are recognizing an intense need to accommodate cognitively im- paired patients more eff ectively and more sensitively. Hospital leaders are seeking a careful balance in separating patients who pose a risk to themselves and others from the general emergency department popula- tion, while ensuring all patients are treated with compassion and dignity. At facilities such as Connecticut's Waterbury Hospital and Newport Hospital in Rhode Island, areas within the ED are being designed for people and families experienc- ing or approaching a crisis requiring behavioral-health or addiction-management intervention. Because patients with cognitive impairment and behavioral issues often require longer stays in the ED than the general population, an emerg- ing best design practice is adding features for them such as bathroom showers, places to securely store belongings and access to decompression space. TREND #2 Taking cues from hospitality industry The healthcare industry is embracing the trend of remov- ing outpatient services from traditional, larger hospitals and moving them to more consumer-friendly environ- ments. In some cases, this trend has been shown to create oper- ational effi ciencies and improve clinical outcomes, such as decreased re-admittance rates. For example, on one recent project at a New York hospital, a 27-unit physician and nurse dormitory was converted into temporary housing for im- munocompromised patients. Procedures like bone-marrow transplants exemplify a unique need for extended care. In the fi rst phase of treat- ment (surgery and post-op), those undergoing BMTs must be served as hospital inpatients. In the second phase, patients are vulnerable to infection and require monitoring for com- plications, but typically do not require a full suite of hospital inpatient services. For this second phase, the hospital's administrators worked with Top predicted trends transforming hospital, healthcare delivery spaces Hospitality: Brian Vanden Brink; VR: E4H di t d t d t f i h it l h lth d li Delivering 2018