Healthcare Facility Planning

Book excerpt: “Spending millions of dollars to renovate, reconfigure, expand, or replace a facility can be intimidating without the right direction. Healthcare Facility Planning: Thinking Strategically is a practical guide that will help you move confidently from planning to implementation. This book's focus is on predesign planning-- a stage in the healthcare facility planning, design, and construction process. Healthcare executives have the greatest opportunity to express a vision for their organization’s future during predesign planning, and decisions made during this stage have the greatest impact on long term operational costs and future flexibility. Careful predesign planning allows an organization to rethink its current patient care delivery model, operational systems and processes, and use of technology to ensure that a facility substantially benefits patients, caregivers, and payers. This new edition addresses current issues—such as new financial incentives, fluctuating utilization and demand, constant pressure for technology adoption and deployment, rising turf wars among specialists, intense focus on patient safety, and aging physical plants--that affect the way facilities are used, planned, financed, and built.”--Back cover.