After establishing priorities and understanding existing building conditions, your design professional can help organize or reorganize the space to maximize efficiency. Consider the following points to help develop an improved floor plan for the hospital:
Create general zones of influence: patient and client service, medical team, patient care and housing, and non-medical support.
Analyze each zone's best traffic flow patterns based on the hospital's size. Smaller hospitals, for example, tend to have more linear exam room setups, whereas larger hospitals rely on grouping exam rooms into pods.
Determine if a second door to each exam room is needed for quicker entry/secondary exit.
Depending on the practice style, the single-door and double-door options offer advantages. However, the double-door model requires extra square footage for the secondary hallways. See Exam Room Two Door Semi Pod in the Resources section below. This is a practice that utilizes two doors for each exam room.
Run imaginary and simulation circulation paths for every function and zone of the hospital to test each potential layout. For example, consider how euthanasia is handled from beginning to end.
How does your client enter the building?
How will they exit?
Discuss how the medical team cares for the patient during the procedure and then moves the body afterward.
How and where does the cremation service pick up?
Running these simulation exercises will help you and the team identify potential issues that must be avoided to ensure all processes and workflows create maximal efficiency and a frictionless client experience.
