Lessons Learned from the Pandemic: Planning Hospitals of the Future

Knowledge gained during the pandemic will be used in many ways to shape health care’s future, and one of the most important will be in facility design. Lessons learned can be applied to finding ways to rapidly scale surge capacity, leverage technology to optimize the efficiency of clinical teams and update critical infrastructure to improve response in future crises.

For health care executives, this may require looking at some investments differently, resetting priorities and scrutinizing new technologies more carefully, as noted in a new AHA Center for Health Innovation Transformation Talks video, “Lessons Learned from the Pandemic and Future Facilities Planning.”

Ongoing market shifts in how and where care is delivered will influence future designs. With lower-acuity care increasingly moving to outpatient settings and surgery centers and the rise in retail clinics and virtual care services, there will be significant ramifications for acute care and specialty hospitals. Many facilities will require even greater space flexibility, says Chad Beebe, deputy executive director of the AHA’s American Society for Health Care Engineering.

In the video, Beebe, Bradley Pollitt, vice president of facilities at the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital, and Brian Cohen, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon, share insights on designing with flexibility and infection prevention in mind, the value of modular construction and modular units during peak surges, and the need to evaluate new technologies and solutions on the entire