Expanding high-quality care

Welcome to Health Facilities Management's annual special issue on Trends in Health Care, in which we explore how major developments within the health care industry are affecting our various audiences.

In the past, we've taken in-depth looks at building value into facilities operations, benchmarking efficiency improvements and spearheading sustainability efforts, among other topics.

While these subjects remain relevant, we decided this year to look at how the movement toward community-based care and the proliferation of off-campus buildings are changing how health care facilities are designed, constructed and operated.

What we found is a new era of experimentation and innovation as health facilities professionals still working through the fine points of building and running hospitals on thinner budgets are now adding a variety of new off-site structures and even home care technologies to their growing list of responsibilities.

From design and construction professionals' exploring new types of spaces and construction methods that bring facilities online quickly, to environmental services managers' mastering the logistics of providing different levels of service, to infrastructure engineers' using the latest technologies that tie these enterprises together, to materials managers' devising new ways of supplying ever-expanding organizations, HFM's readers have been answering these challenges in resourceful, previously unimagined ways.

So, turn to Page 14 and learn about the financial imperatives driving hospitals to reach further into their communities and how health facilities design, construction and operations professionals are helping their organizations to expand high-quality care to a changing patient population.