In the latest episode of the MGMA Insights Podcast, host Daniel Williams sits down with Sharon Woodworth, healthcare sector leader at HED (Harley Ellis Devereaux), a national architecture and engineering firm. Woodworth, who has over 12 million square feet of healthcare facility design experience, shares her expertise in creating innovative spaces that support efficient patient care and address the challenges medical practices face, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Balancing Sensory Experiences and Operational Efficiency
Woodworth's approach to healthcare design is rooted in her unique perspective as both a clinician and a patient. Her work utilizes the importance of considering the sensory experience of patients and staff, from temperature and lighting to smell and sound.
"I'm physically in the space. How does it feel? You know, is it hot? Is it cold? Is it dark? Is it light? How does it smell? What does it look like?" Woodworth explains. While factoring these details into her work, she also stresses the need to balance these sensory considerations with operational efficiency and clinical needs.
Addressing Rising Costs Through Standardization and Flexibility
With the rising costs of healthcare due to inflation and labor shortages, Woodworth highlights the role of design in helping medical practices manage these challenges. Aligning standardization in architectural design with operational standards can improve efficiency while supporting staffing and resource management.
"The more standardization you have, the more creation of pods when an unusual disease does take over an institution and you have to switch gears. If you've got a standard, you can switch what you're doing in that simple, standardized space, and do something different to meet that new disease," Woodworth says.
Flexible Pod Designs for Adaptable Spaces
One of Woodworth’s key design strategies is the use of "pod" or "neighborhood" designs in healthcare facilities. These flexible layouts allow for the grouping of repeated room types, such as exam rooms or emergency department bays, which can be easily scaled up or down based on staffing and operational needs.
"If those doors are open, it allows you to scale up. So that’s the flexibility that we're talking about – having one neighborhood help another, which was especially valuable during COVID. With staffing changes, we often needed to scale up quickly, sometimes with only a few staff members to serve multiple neighborhoods or pods," Woodworth explains.
Lessons from the Pandemic and the Importance of Adaptability
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted healthcare design, according to Woodworth. One major takeaway from this impact is understanding how healthcare architecture can affect health outcomes and the need for adaptable spaces that can respond to future health crises.
As Woodworth explains, "The pandemic taught all of us that the healthcare environment and healthcare architecture impacts health. And granted for COVID in particular, it was that movement of air and that closeness or distance from others. But that was just one example. The next pandemic may be teaching us something else."
Looking ahead, Woodworth predicts that data and artificial intelligence (AI) will play a significant role in shaping the future of healthcare facility design. She envisions a shift from rule-of-thumb design to data-driven decision-making, where sensors and analytics can provide insights to optimize space utilization and design. "Data will be designing our future more and more," Woodworth says.
Resources:
- HED website - Visit Here
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