The staid and predictable health-care industry of the past no longer exists. Hospitals are going through a self-transformation of institutional form and purpose.
Over the last ten years the hospital fraction of total insurance premium dollars
has dropped by 33 percent. Over the same period, almost 500 acute care hospitals have been shut down. Average inpatient census has declined by 23 percent, leaving most of our nation’s hospital beds empty half of the time. These grim statistics would predict that the design and construction of healthcare facilities is plummeting, but such is not the case.
While new hospital construction has declined over the last five years, hospital renovations have increased 10 percent and the total square footage of all healthcare facility construction has remained steady at the 70 to 75 million square feet range. The U.S. Commerce Department is actually forecasting 4 percent annual growth for healthcare construction through 1999.
How can the construction of healthcare facilities be increasing while total hospital revenues and inpatient census is declining? To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, the future of healthcare isn't what it used to be. Medical care organizations are no longer investing in the traditional patient care facilities of the past. Hospitals, nursing homes and clinics are retooling their facilities as the healthcare industry reinvents itself for the future.
Despite the decline in inpatient census, new and renovated healthcare facilities are being created for:
- Hospitals attempting to reduce operating costs, or position themselves for managed care contracts
- Investing in new types of buildings and healthcare services
- Rebuilding hospitals for an increasing number of outpatient services
- Upgrading existing healthcare facilities to accommodate medical technologies
- Creating therapeutic healthcare environments · Creating health facilities to increase patient satisfaction.
This paper addresses some of these medical megatrends, demonstrating how the new strategies and philosophies of healthcare will translate into the next generation of medical care facilities.