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Modern Clinic Design: Strategies for an Era of Change is a comprehensive guide to optimizing patient experience through the design of the built environment. Written by a team of veteran healthcare interior designers, architects, and engineers, this book addresses the impacts of evolving legislation, changing technologies, and emerging nontraditional clinic models on clinic design, and illustrates effective design strategies for any type of clinic. Readers will find innovative ideas about lean design, design for flexibility, and the use of mock-ups to prototype space plans within a clinic setting, and diagrammed examples including waiting rooms, registration desks, and exam rooms that demonstrate how these ideas are applied to real-world projects. Spurred on by recent healthcare legislation and new technological developments, clinics can now offer a greater variety of services in a greater variety of locations. Designers not only need to know the different requirements for each of these spaces, but also understand how certain design strategies affect the patient's experience in the space. This book explores all aspects of clinic design, and describes how aesthetics and functionality can merge to provide a positive experience for patients, staff, and healthcare providers.

Objective This study aims to provide inputs for creating a child-friendly dental hospital by investigating the satisfaction and needs of children and their parents regarding the current environment of dental hospitals. Study design Firstly, the KJ method was used to construct evaluation indicators. Secondly, need indicators were classified with the Kano model. Thirdly, the weight of need indicators was evaluated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) from both expert and user perspectives, thereby determining indicator priorities. Finally, the Kano-AHP model was used to fit indicator weights, and targeted optimization schemes were proposed. Results A total of 484 children aged 6–14 and their parents, along with 10 experts, participated in this study. (1) The Kano model shows that 9 Must-be needs are prioritized; 6 Attractive needs can significantly improve satisfaction; 12 One-dimensional needs call for continuous improvement; and 1 Indifferent needs can be postponed. (2) Based on AHP analysis, both experts and users prioritize needs for facilities and physical environment. After the improvement of weight, user needs shifted to equal emphasis on facilities and activities, indicating that the existing environment design can partially meet the must-be needs, with expectations for interactive experiences and emotional design significantly increasing. (3) A design priority sequence has been formed: “construct visual environment and interactive experiences - configure facilities and innovate treatment forms - enhance environmental safety and comfort - sustain advantageous projects”. (4) Five design strategies have been proposed. Conclusion For dental hospitals, it is essential to strike a balance between the renovation of child-friendly environment and the integration of humanized services. The study findings may help designers and clinicians create child-friendly environments in dental hospitals, and provide references for similar dental hospitals to enhance children’s visiting experience.

Background Infrastructure development and upgrading to support safe surgical services in primary health care facilities is an important step in the journey towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Quality health service provision together with equitable geographic access and service delivery are important components that constitute UHC. Tanzania has been investing in infrastructure development to offer essential safe surgery close to communities at affordable costs while ensuring better outcomes. This study aimed to understand the public sector’s efforts to improve the infrastructure of primary health facilities between 2005 and 2019. We assessed the construction rates, geographic coverage, and physical status of each facility, surgical safety and services rendered in public primary health facilities. Methods Data was collected from existing policy reports, the Services Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) tool (physical status), the Health Facility Registry (HFR), implementation reports on infrastructure development from the 26 regions and 185 district councils across the country (covering assessment of physical infrastructure, waste management systems and inventories for ambulances) and Comprehensive Emergence Obstetric Care (CEMONC) signal functions assessment tool. Data was descriptively analyzed so as to understand the distribution of primary health care facilities and their status (old, new, upgraded, under construction, renovated and equipped), and the service provided, including essential surgical services. Results Of 5072 (518 are Health Centers and 4554 are Dispensaries) existing public primary health care facilities, the majority (46%) had a physical status of A (good state), 33% (1693) had physical status of B (minor renovation needed) and the remaining facilities had physical status of C up to F (needing major renovation). About 33% (1673) of all health facilities had piped water and 5.1% had landline telecommunication system. Between 2015 and August 2019, a total of 419 (8.3%) health facilities (Consisting of 350 health centers and 69 District Council Hospitals) were either renovated or constructed and equipped to offer safe surgery services. Of all Health Centers only 115 (22.2%) were offering the CEMONC services. Of these 115 health facilities, only 20 (17.4%) were offering the CEMONC services with all 9 - signal functions and only 17.4% had facilities that are offering safe blood transfusion services. Conclusion This study indicates that between 2015 and 2019 there has been improvement in physical status of primary health facilities as a result constructions, upgrading and equipping the facilities to offer safe surgery and related diagnostic services. Despite the achievements, still there is a high demand for good physical statuses and functioning of primary health facilities with capacity to offer essential and safe surgical services in the country also as an important strategy towards achieving UHC. This is also inline with the National Surgical, Obstetrics and Anesthesia plan (NSOAP).

This study utilizes an improved NSGA-II algorithm to conduct a multi-objective optimization of the hospital outpatient department layout. By simultaneously incorporating patient walking distance, hospital operating costs, patient waiting time, and medical staff work efficiency as optimization objectives, and adopting an adaptive population size adjustment strategy, this paper optimizes the existing outpatient layout in a case study of a three-story outpatient building at Panzhihua Central Hospital. The results show that the new plan reduces patient walking distance by 57.2%, shortens waiting time by 59%, and enhances medical staff collaboration efficiency, while only increasing costs by 5.6%. This demonstrates the effectiveness and feasibility of the improved NSGA-II method in handling complex multi-objective optimization problems for outpatient layouts. The research findings provide a reference for the rational allocation of hospital outpatient resources and the improvement of service quality. Additionally, this paper discusses the applicability and limitations of the study and proposes future research directions, including validating the method’s effectiveness in hospitals of various types and sizes, incorporating dynamic optimization and real-time data, and deeply integrating with hospital information systems.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global health threat. A hospital in Zhuhai adopted several measures in Fever Clinic Management (FCM) to respond to the outbreak of COVID-19. FCM has been proved to be effective in preventing nosocomial cross infection. Faced with the emergency, the hospital undertook creative operational steps in relation to the control and spread of COVID-19, with special focuses on physical and administrative layout of buildings, staff training and preventative procedures. The first operational step was to set up triaging stations at all entrances and then complete a standard and qualified fever clinic, which was isolated from the other buildings within our hospital complex. Secondly, the hospital established its human resource reservation for emergency response and the allocation of human resources to ensure strict and standardised training methods through the hospital for all medical staff and ancillary employees. Thirdly, the hospital divided the fever clinic into partitioned areas and adapted a three-level triaging system. The experiences shared in this paper would be of practical help for the facilities that are encountering or will encounter the challenges of COVID-19, i.e. to prevent nosocomial cross infection among patients and physicians.

Background Refugee and immigrant populations have diverse cultural factors that affect their access to health care and must be considered when building a new clinical space. Health design thinking can help a clinical team evaluate and consolidate these factors while maintaining close contact with architects, patients’ community leaders, and hospital or institutional leadership. A diverse group of clinicians, medical students, community leaders and architects planned a clinic devoted to refugee and immigrant health, a first-of-its-kind for South Philadelphia. Methods The planning process and concept design of this wellness center is presented as a design case study to demonstrate how principles and methods of human-centered design were used to create a community clinic. Design thinking begins with empathizing with the end users’ experiences before moving to ideation and prototyping of a solution. These steps were accomplished through focus groups, a design workshop, and iterations of the center’s plan. Results Focus groups were thematically analyzed and generated two themes of access and resources and seven subthemes that informed the design workshop. A final floor plan of the wellness center was selected, incorporating priorities of all stakeholders and addressing issues of disease prevention, social determinants of health, and lifestyle-related illness that were relevant to the patient population. Conclusions Design thinking methods are useful for health care organizations that must adapt to the needs of diverse stakeholders and especially populations that are underserved or displaced. While much has been written on the theory and stages of design thinking, this study is novel in describing this methodology from the beginning to the end of the process of planning a clinical space with input from the patient population. This study thus serves as a proof of concept of the application of design thinking in planning clinical spaces.

The aim of this research is to investigate the role of servicescape on re-patronage and recommended intention through pleasure feeling and satisfaction in healthcare settings that put substantial contribution in the process of healthcare service delivery. Data were collected through cross-sectional convenience sampling via a self-administered survey questionnaire from 431 clinical outpatients who revisit the same hospital of metropolitan areas of Punjab, Pakistan. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was carried out for path analysis through AMOS (24.0 V), while statistical measures were analyzed using SPSS (25.0 V). The present study results revealed that patients’ intention optimistically triggered through partial mediation and affirm the direct and indirect association with servicescape. It also revealed that patient-recommended and re-patronage intentions to visit the clinic were statistically substantial and positively influenced by intervening constructs of pleasure feeling and satisfaction. Additionally, it is found that servicescape and pleasure feeling contributed to 30% change in satisfaction. Moreover, pleasure feeling, and satisfaction contributed to 50% change in re-patronage and 31% change in recommendation intention of the patients. The current study findings contribute significantly to servicescape literature from a theatrical perspective and reevaluate the patterns and operations in healthcare. It also helps managers and administrators of private hospitals to make strategies to increase patient satisfaction.

Under the impact of COVID-19 and the needs for urban expansion, a large number of outpatient buildings have been rapidly constructed, but the problem of high energy consumption has always been ignored. There is a lack of research on the adaptability of building shape in different climate zones. Many studies have shown that a reasonable shape in the early stage of design can significantly reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Therefore, it helps if architects quickly select a reasonable shape that can effectively reduce energy consumption. This study summarized a number of outpatient building cases in China and proposed three typical building shapes: centralized-type (Shape-1), corridor-type (Shape-2), and courtyard-type (Shape-3). The Design Builder tool was used to simulate and analyze the typical building energy consumption in different climate zones. The simulation results show that Shape-2 (angle: 0°) should be chosen in severe cold zone; Shape-1 (angle: 90°) should be chosen in cold zone; Shape-1 (angle: 0°) should be chosen in hot summer and cold winter zone; Shape-1 (angle: 60°) should be chosen in hot summer and warm winter zone; and Shape-1 or Shape-2 can be chosen in warm zone. The results of this study can provide suggestions for the energy saving design of outpatient buildings in China and other areas with similar conditions. The result can help architects make rapid shape selection in the early stage of design.

Objectives. We examined the asthma-control benefit of moving into an asthma-friendly Breathe-Easy home (BEH). Methods. We used a quasi-experimental design to compare the asthma outcomes of 2 groups of low-income children and adolescents with asthma: 34 participants who moved into a BEH, and a local matched cohort of 68 participants who had received a previous asthma-control intervention. Both groups received in-home asthma education. BEHs were constructed with moisture-reduction features, enhanced ventilation systems, and materials that minimized dust and off-gassing. Results. BEH residents’ asthma-symptom–free days increased from a mean of 8.6 per 2 weeks in their old home to 12.4 after 1 year in the BEH. The proportion of BEH residents with an urgent asthma-related clinical visit in the previous 3 months decreased from 62% to 21%. BEH caretakers’ quality of life increased significantly. The BEH group improved more than did the comparison group, but most differences in improvements were not significant. Exposures to mold, rodents, and moisture were reduced significantly in BEHs. Conclusions. Children and adolescents with asthma who moved into an asthma-friendly home experienced large decreases in asthma morbidity and trigger exposure.