Ambulatory Care Facility Development, Simone Health, Discusses 4 Innovative Ambulatory Facility Design Trends
BRONX, N.Y.: Ambulatory facilities, or outpatient services, are a growing sector of the healthcare industry. With the heightened focus on ambulatory care, design trends considering outpatient care facilities are increasing throughout the medical world. These trends are increasingly combining the best developments in technology with new, high-efficiency operational and process designs. Ambulatory care facility development, Simone Health, discusses a few of the most innovative ambulatory facility design trends impacting the healthcare industry today:
Telehealth: Telehealth is a growing trend throughout the healthcare industry. It involves utilizing AV technology and personal healthcare devices to expand patient reach and provide extended care to remote patient households who may find it financially or medically burdensome to travel far. Telehealth allows healthcare providers to contact, monitor, and advise patients through long-distance communication and regular health monitoring by utilizing technology. Including telehealth capabilities in your ambulatory care facility can expand your reach and allow you to provide to-quality medical care to a wider region of patients.
Combine Urgent Care & Ambulatory Clinics: Urgent care clinics are increasingly becoming the go-to healthcare service for a large amount of people. With low wait times, quick turnover, and high flexibility, they're the epitome of the convenient care that many patients with busy lives are looking for. Combining urgent care centers with ambulatory clinics provides your patients with the access of an urgent care facility and the attention of ambulatory facilities. The overall patient experience is more patient-centered now than ever, so it's important to integrate the patient's needs into one streamlined space.
Flexibility: Flexibility is an essential feature of any modern ambulatory care facility. Since there are a variety of health concerns that outpatient care can cover, having a standardized, flexible facility is a key way to ensure a great patient experience for everyone who walks in your door. Designing for flexibility means allowing for short procedure rooms to be used for multiple purposes, staff members to be interchangeable through departments, and a space that's able to grow to scale in the future as patient demands change and fluctuate.
Shared Appointments: Many ambulatory healthcare facilities have begun to incorporate larger gathering spaces for shared appointments. Shared appointments are especially useful for patient education on chronic conditions or lifelong disorders, like arthritis or diabetes, where patients can learn in a group setting how to best manage their symptoms. Shared appointments provide patients with a support system of not only their doctor, but also other patients with similar conditions. Shared appointments are highly efficient for healthcare purposes, while providing a valuable social addition to the medical experience.
Ambulatory care is becoming a vital piece of many healthcare facilities, which means making the outpatient patient experience as efficient, flexible, and modern as possible is in your favor. Using some of the concepts above can completely transform the way your ambulatory care facility runs today.
