BRONX, N.Y. (April 2020) — Designing an ED (Emergency Department) can be a complex task given all the considerations required for flexibility, scale, and future patient demand. Modern ED design must be centered around being able to move and grow freely. The ED is a key piece of the healthcare facility, so its design is essential for great patient satisfaction levels. How can you take ED design to the next level? Ambulatory care facility development, Simone Health, discusses 5 out-of-the-box approaches to ED design down below.
Staff Flexibility: When you’re designing an ED, it’s important to consider your staff members and their functions as key moving pieces of any design. Facilitating an environment for flexible staff members that can take on a wide variety of patients is highly valuable. Instead of having regular clerical staff up front, consider having the staff members handling the patient’s case from beginning to end. This process cuts down on required personnel, while giving patients shorter lines to wait in.
Mass Casualty Preparations: Though they’re unfortunate events, it’s essential for any ED to be equipped with the right space and tools to handle a mass emergency. If there’s an accident or attack, it’s important to incorporate mass casualty preparations into your design. This means having the potential to increase and decrease patient capacity as needed. It also includes equipping the facility with the right amount of medical tools should a high influx of people come in for urgent care. Designing your ED to handle tragedy is an important part of making it an effective facility in times of need.
Mental Health Capacities: Mental health concerns are valid reasons for a patient to be brought into an ED. However, many ED are not designed for mental health patients, as they lack the proper resources and spatial requirements for quality emergency mental health care. For mental health patients, the healthcare space must be flexible for their medical needs, such as lower noise levels and sealed away medical instruments. Fitting patient rooms to be able to transform into a specialized mental health room can be a very valuable design element for your ED.
Creature Comforts: Healthcare settings are undoubtedly a stressful situation to be in, but this is especially true in an ED, where people come for anything from minor to major health emergencies. When health is involved, patients and visitors alike are in high-stress mode, but medical facilities are built to care for the patient, not their visitors. In many cases, visitors don’t know how long they will be sitting in an ED waiting room– it could be anywhere from 30 minute to hours. Make your ED unique by catering a little bit to visitors as well; laying out a table of a few simple comforts, like free tea, coffee, fruit, and small snacks or candies, can give visitors some much needed attention while they wait for their patient.
In ambulatory care, as in any medical facility, design is king. There are so many considerations and possible approaches that it can be a challenge to build the perfect healthcare facility. However, using some of the suggestions above, you can elevate your ED to the next level and provide your patients with a quality ED experience.
About Simone Health Development Companies:
Simone Health Development Companies is a full-service real estate investment company specializing in the acquisition and development of office, retail, industrial and healthcare properties in the New York tristate area. Headquartered in the Bronx, the privately held company owns and manages more than 5 million square feet of property in the Bronx, Westchester County, Queens, Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. The company’s portfolio includes more than 100 properties and ranges from multi-building office parks to retail and industrial space. The largest and most successful development from Simone Health is the 42-acre Hutchinson Metro Center office complex located directly off the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx. The first two phases of the complex, which comprise nearly 750,000 square feet of Class A office and medical space, are fully leased. Two additional phases totaling 650,000 square feet (370,000-square-foot Metro Center Atrium and 280,000-square-foot Tower Two), are completed and fully leased.
SOURCE: Simone Health Development Companies