Healthcare Design - October 2019 - 48

The

Center

SHIFTING GEARS

The Center is looking for new ideas to encourage
innovation and help drive the industry forward
By Debra Levin

FTER RECENTLY PARTICIPATING on a jury for a healthcare design competition, it's clear to me that the industry has raised the bar of minimum expectations
in facility design. The level of design work being
done in healthcare is thoughtful and well executed,
and the general sense from jurors was that the work
was all very good. But what was equally interesting
to me was that very little rose above that baseline
level of quality. There were no "wow" moments of innovation.
As reassuring as it was to see the minimum standard of expectations
so high, I couldn't help but wonder what's
inhibiting us from additional innovation in
THE HEALTHCARE DESIGN
our industry. We seem to have been idling in
INDUSTRY HAS BEEN
this same place for quite a while now, stalled
at "very good."
STALLED AT "VERY GOOD"
I've been using this question as a jumping
FOR QUITE A WHILE NOW.
off point for some one-on-one conversations that I've been having with key leaders
from many of the architectural and design firms that make up our industry. A few interesting ideas have surfaced from this group of leaders
that I'd love to share.
The first is around the recession and design fees. The last recession
hit our industry very hard. In many ways, we lost an entire generation of
design professionals who left the industry to find work elsewhere. It will
take a long time to recover from that talent drain. Even more impactful

OCTOBER 2019

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has been the effect the economic downturn
had on driving down fees. Though the industry is building again, fees remain low even as
the costs of operating a firm have gone up. This
has led to a leanness in the design process that
has reduced the amount of time and resources
available for research, design exploration, and
the creative process, which directly lead to innovation. As one architect shared, "When you
are out of time, you take less risk." Another
colleague made the astute observation that
"We're doing fine for the healthcare of today,
but what about the healthcare of the future?"
The second interesting idea that surfaced in
these conversations is the misinterpretation of
the evidence-based design (EBD) process. It's
possible that a process that was put in place to
encourage innovative thinking (Step 5 of the
EBD process is "create a hypothesis") might in
fact be limiting innovation by causing people
to not take risks that aren't already supported
by evidence. As one architect shared, "Innovation has no evidence, so does the rigor take
away the ability of someone to try out something new and innovative?" It's interesting
to think that the rigor that leads to more informed decision-making may be having a boomerang effect and causing people to no longer
feel comfortable making decisions in the absence of research. And yet, the only way to contribute to the body of EBD research is to step
out of the box and try new things.
Moving forward, what can we do to ensure
and encourage innovation? The answers will
come from many fronts but, from The Center's
standpoint, we need to work to more quickly
gather and spread new ideas on a large scale.
We are broadening the conversations we're
having to include disparate industries that
have successfully solved similar problems and
bring a broader influence of disciplines into the
conversation. We'll work to better personalize
the information you receive from us so we're
not contributing to the noise and distractions
in your world. And we'll listen more, so please
come talk to us. Call, write, email, or visit-we
do our best when we're informed by you. 
Debra Levin is president and CEO of The Center for
Health Design. She can be reached at D L E V I N @
H E A LT H D E S I G N . O R G .

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Healthcare Design - October 2019

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