Designing health care spaces large and small

Given the rise of smaller, off-site health care facilities, one might think large-scale medical center construction is a thing of the past. And, if so, one would be wrong.

As the lead feature in this month’s online HFM Design News proves, there are still a number of large health facility construction projects opening to serve their surrounding areas. With an emphasis on efficiency and consolidation of services, these new facilities aren’t like the more lavish hospitals of 10 years ago, but their massive scale points to the major facility investments the health care field can still command.

On the other side of the coin, our second feature describes the great variety of smaller ambulatory facilities finding their way into the planning, design and construction schedules of the nation’s health care organizations. Serving their communities by moving off campus and into more convenient reach of consumers, these facilities are built on models such as retail clinics, urgent care clinics, freestanding emergency departments, on-site health clinics, primary care facilities and ambulatory care/specialty care centers.

Rounding out this month’s issue of HFM Design News, our third feature takes a look at the measures health care planning, design and construction professionals are using to help hospitals improve patient safety; and our fourth feature looks at the always rigorous requirements for designing health care imaging spaces.

Health care spaces are being designed and built in greater variety that ever before. This month’s HFM Design News looks at four of the virtually unlimited number of variables.