While much needs to be done to make healthcare available to all Americans, the design of the healthcare environment is already undergoing a successful transformation of its own.

Tomorrow's challenge today
For a quick immersion in contemporary healthcare in America, all you have to do is tune into such popular TV medical dramas as "ER," make an appointment to see your doctor or visit your local hospital's emergency department.

Chances are things won't be dull. Some of the biggest crises you will see involve an enormous medical issue: the aging of the population. Americans age 65 and older will swell to about 20 percent of the population in the next 30 years, though the nation will still be younger than the populations of Japan, Italy, Germany or France. This corresponding swelling of healthcare dependency intersects with another key challenge confronting the medical establishment: the increasing difficulty patients have in paying their healthcare providers. Some 43.6 million Americans lacked health insurance in 2002, according to the Census Bureau, and millions more will struggle to pay their share of medical bills. Despite these large challenges — and in response to them as well — the physical space of the $1.4 trillion healthcare industry is becoming more attractive and assuring. Today's healthcare environment is designed to respond to the needs of patients and families as well as medical staff.

Healthcare planners, architects and interior designers have successfully introduced many of the aesthetic values common to the hospitality world to make patients, families and friends feel like guests.

It wasn't always this way. Historically, healthcare facilities were designed to assist healthcare givers. Logical as this seemed, recent research into the link between the medical and psychological states of patients affected by ailing immune systems (a field of study known as psychoneuroimmunology) revealed that emotions play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of physical diseases associated with immunological dysfunctions. In other words, many patients experience improved therapeutic outcomes when placed in sympathetic surroundings. The revelation came just in time, as managed healthcare, redundant healthcare systems and medical advances in procedures and technology gave healthcare institutions incentive to recruit doctors and patients at their rivals' expense.

What design is bringing to healthcare
Designing to give the patient greater control over his environment, more stimulating physical surroundings, enhanced privacy and comfort and greater opportunity to interact with family and friends has launched a peaceful revolution among the nation's healthcare facilities. Healthcare planners, architects and interior designers have successfully introduced many of the aesthetic values common to the hospitality world to make patients, families and friends feel like guests. The results have often been dramatic.

Hospitals are not hotels, of course. But the public has immediately noticed and appreciated the introduction of patient rooms with handsome furnishings, subtle lighting, private toilets, patient-operated remote controls for beds, window blinds, lighting, TV monitors and staff assistance, and accommodations for personal belongings and family visits and overnight stays. No less welcome has been the appearance of sophisticated architecture and interior design throughout the facilities, convenient medical office buildings and parking garages adjacent to the hospitals they serve, and such useful amenities as public lounges, family consultation rooms, cafeterias, gift shops, landscaped healing gardens, public education and resource centers, and wellness spas.

As a result, patients, families and friends no longer feel like intruders, and family members can even participate in patient care, supplementing the work of hospital staff. Doctors are taking advantage of modern and affordable office space offered by hospitals - and repaying them by referring their patients to the hospitals' services. Where discussions once dealt exclusively with disease and sickness, the public is coming to learn more about exercise, nutrition and other keys to wellness.

Can design heal healthcare?
Impressive as architecture and interior design have been in transforming the face of healthcare, there are major challenges ahead that may take more than good design to resolve. Medical cost containment and industry consolidation, for example, has encouraged regional healthcare systems and highly efficient facilities that minimize the number of healthcare personnel needed for operation. These cost-squeezing measures have eliminated redundant personnel and inefficient older buildings, but the impact of the new facilities has not been uniformly beneficial. Medical personnel often complain of increasing stress because staff reductions leave them with little time to devote to anyone but patients facing critical situations. Turnover among nurses has become a serious problem in some hospitals.

Furniture that helps maintain a steady yet flexible degree of organization amid fast changing and stressful circumstances could be just what the doctor ordered.

The decentralization and specialization of healthcare delivery has also affected healthcare design in surprising ways. The need for neighborhood clinics, standalone surgical centers, cancer treatment centers and other new kinds of institutions that are smaller, nimbler and cheaper than general hospitals has spurred the development of new and unprecedented types of facilities. Similarly, increased demand for specialized institutions focusing on cancer, cardiac care and the needs of children and women are bringing innovative design concepts to the treatment of these patients.

Meanwhile, the office environment that supports doctors, nurses, support staff and administrators confronts a future in which increasingly powerful technological tools such as PACS (a patient archival communication system that sends vital imaging test results to physicians' personal computers) take their place alongside mountains of traditional paper documents.

How Knoll can help
Knoll furniture systems, seating, desks, storage units, tables and filing cabinets can allow the healthcare industry to maintain a steady yet flexible degree of order among their information and personnel despite fast changing and stressful circumstances. Whether a healthcare facility needs a private office, general office area, medical records archive, conference room or lounge, Knoll furniture easily adapts without losing its utility, strength or dignity. It could be just what the doctor ordered.