Healthcare Design - November 2014 - 28

C THE CENTER | 11.14
A proactive approach to planning
The Built Environment Network is creating a facility planning roadmap
that anticipates providers' needs rather than reacting to them
By Debra Levin
The focus of a recent meeting of the Built Environment Network (BEN), a small group of senior-level
healthcare facility executives and industry partners,
was how to better dovetail design and facility planning with providers' strategic planning and capital
allocations process. The group spent the better
part of two days dissecting the industry's current
process and looking for new ways to deliver projects that are symbiotic with the goals of hospitals
and health systems.
We have a perfect opportunity now to redesign
this process and in doing so create facilities that not
only better respond to strategic initiatives but that
are less expensive to build and operate, provide
work environments supportive of organizational
goals, and leverage the asset for long-term viability.
The world of healthcare has shifted. Past generations connected to a healthcare system that had a
hospital at its center and physician practices emanating from it. Future generations are more likely
to relate to a healthcare system that's fragmented
and yet closely incorporated into their lives and lifestyles, with healthcare more a continuous process
than a physical space and person.
Knowing this, the consensus of the group was
that strategic planning as we know it must change,
too. The usefulness of a five- or 10-year strategic
plan is declining, as more and more decisions are
being made with awareness of real-time information
and in anticipation of changing conditions. Could
we deliver a dynamic master plan with bandwidth
that allows it to react to change-a "just-in-time
strategic facilities plan" based on a future needs
assessment, one that informs the strategic plan as
much as it's responsive to it? In this way, might we
move away from the constantly reactive way we
approach facility planning?
The BEN group thinks so and has started to chip
away at a new process map for strategic facility planning, identifying a set of tactics organized
around four areas: process, innovation, collaboration, and information. Some of the measures that
might fall into such a plan:
Process strategies
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cost, etc.) and downstream implications (clinical
outcomes, patient satisfaction, lower infection
28

HCDmagazine.com 11.14

rates, financial performance, staff satisfaction,
patient satisfaction, etc.).
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patient demographics affect service utilization over
time.
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space inventory can be evaluated to help make
informed decisions on whether to keep, renovate,
or jettison assets.
Innovation strategies
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capital investment strategies have a limited shelf
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outcomes.
Collaboration strategies
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relationships with business development to share
information bi-directionally, and an external forum
for cataloging innovations and publishing results.
Innovation strategies
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complete a strategic facility plan.
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need to be tracked and track them.
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could and should be done that includes the logic
behind the linkages.
BEN's work will continue to be refined and the results will be presented this month at the Healthcare
Design Conference in San Diego, where a broader
audience will be able to comment on and add to the
draft roadmap. BEN expects this to be an ongoing
project and plans to make a draft available to others
in the future. HCD
Debra Levin is president and CEO of The Center for
Health Design. She can be reached at dlevin@health
design.org.

Debra Levin

http://www.design.org http://www.HCDmagazine.com

Healthcare Design - November 2014

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