Designing A Medical Facility: 6 Tips For Improving Patient Care

What are the effective tips for improving patient care?

When it comes to designing a medical facility, it is important that you focus on ways to improve patient care.

Patient care should be at the forefront of all of your decision-making as it is important that you are able to provide a safe and secure facility for patients to receive healthcare.

You have to remember that for many patients, the idea of going into a medical facility for any reason can be a little daunting, so you must ensure that your facility is a safe and judgement-free space where anyone can go to receive healthcare.

If you are planning on building a medical facility, then this article is for you.

In this article, we will go over some top tips that will help you improve patient care when designing a medical facility.

It is crucial that you always consider the needs of your patients and that you do what you can to ensure they are happy and healthy.

So, if you want to learn about our top patient care tips, then keep on reading to find out more!

TIPS FOR IMPROVING PATIENT CARE

Create A Comfortable Waiting Room

During the process of designing a medical facility, one thing people tend to miss is creating a comfortable waiting room.

It is easy to get caught up in designing patient rooms or investing in the latest technology, but you have to remember that patients can often spend hours in a waiting room, so they need to be comfortable while they wait to be seen.

The waiting room is a focal point of a medical facility, and it is often a place that can generate a lot of anxiety.

When you are feeling unwell, or you are injured, it can be stressful waiting to be seen by a doctor.

Therefore, you should design your medical facility, so that the waiting room is welcoming and a comfortable place to be.

Invest in good quality chairs and consider adding a water dispenser and a coffee station.

You could also add a vending machine too so that if people have been waiting a while, they can still keep their energy up.

Use Technological Solutions

Another tip that can help you improve patient care when designing a medical facility is using technological solutions.

Technology has evolved so much over the last few decades, and one industry that has seen an influx of technological solutions is in healthcare.

When you are designing a medical facility, you should take advantage of new technology and see how you can use it to improve patient care.

It could be that you invest in new medical machines for patients, or it could even be investing in technology for admin staff.

Another way you can use technological solutions is during the actual construction process; you can use healthcare construction management software, like from e-Builder, to assist you during construction.

With healthcare project management software, you can easily organize and manage your team, as well as control funding and budget.

Not only does this allow you to have better control over your healthcare construction project, but it also means you can improve patient care by designing an excellent medical facility.

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Listen To Previous Complaints

If you have previously managed medical facilities, then you will know what it takes to run them properly.

When you are designing a new medical facility, you should use your previous experience and let that help you create a better facility.

It is likely that in your previous facility, you would have had some patient complaints.

Of course, some of these complaints are likely down to circumstance, and they may not have been anyone to blame, but if you do have some complaints that were about the general facility, then you should use those in your current project.

Improving patient care is something that should be at the forefront of everything you do, so it would benefit both you and your future patients if you listened to previous complaints.

Ensure The Building Is Accessible

Another important thing you need to remember when designing a medical facility is to ensure that the building is accessible.

There is no way for you to have proper patient care if you design a building that is not equipped to deal with the patient’s needs.

Therefore, you must ensure that every entrance is wheelchair accessible and that there is adequate room in hallways for wheelchairs to get through.

Furthermore, you must include enough disabled parking spots within your parking lot, as this will be helpful for anyone who has a disability and needs to access the medical facility.

Lastly, you need to install wheelchair-friendly doors, so that people can easily get around the building without having help from anyone else.

Making the building accessible will improve patient care massively, as it will give you the ability to provide excellent care to everyone.

Be Strategic About Who You Hire

One important aspect of improving patient care is being strategic about who you hire.

While having a safe and secure building is important, ultimately, good patient care comes from the people who work at the facility.

Therefore, once the construction work is complete, you should spend a lot of time selecting a good team of people, so that patients can feel happy and cared for.

Of course, choosing the right doctors and nurses is essential, but you also need to be strategic when hiring reception staff too.

Often, the first impression and interaction patients will have at a medical center are receptionists, so you need to hire a good team of people that can make patients feel welcome straight away.

Consider the size of your medical facility and use that to help you understand how many people you need to hire.

The last thing you want is to be short-staffed, so you must ensure that you have enough staff members so that everyone can be cared for.

Ensure Staff Have A Proper Breakroom

Working in a medical facility can be a tough job. Having to care for sick patients and manage anxious and worried people can be exhausting, so it is important that your staff have a proper breakroom where they can go to relax and unwind during their break.

When you are designing a medical facility, you must ensure that you also design a relaxing breakroom for your staff.

Working long hours can easily lead to burnout, which can, in turn, lead to a reduced quality of patient care.

If your staff are overworked and exhausted, they may not be able to provide proper care for their patients, which, in the worst-case scenario, could be fatal.

You need to provide a space away from everything where your staff can go to recharge.

When designing the breakroom, consider adding things like comfy chairs or sofas and charging points for their phones.

The breakroom should also have kitchen facilities so that your staff can eat proper meals during their break.

If you wanted to make things even nicer, you could add a coffee machine and some free snacks that people can help themselves to.

Simple things like this can make a real difference to a stressful medical worker and it can help you improve the care of your patients.