Much has been written about the need to create healthier environments in healthcare facilities. One might reasonably wonder why healthcare environments would be otherwise. However, after a generation of designing facilities to be more and more sterile, more and more suburban, and more and more maintenance-driven, it’s not hard to see why the pendulum might swing toward a more patient-centered environment.
The recent launch of LEED for Healthcare and its parallel, The Green Guide for Healthcare (GGHC), as well as the growth of green teams and farmers markets at hospitals, illustrate several of the macro- and micro-trends that are emerging.
There is scientific evidence and widespread support for the idea that outdoor environments are good for people. Exposure to the outdoors reduces stress and in measurable ways reduces the amount of medication patients require. There also is evidence to suggest that a well-designed outdoor environment contributes to staff retention and can be a key marketing tool for facilities that are competing for both patients and healthcare professionals.
For instance, a recent advertising campaign features Baltimore-based Mercy Medical Center’s “eco-friendly gardens” in a major television and billboard marketing blitz to promote the facility’s new 18-story expansion tower.
It has been 35 years since the Nurses’ Health Study showed that brisk walking decreases the likelihood of a coronary event in women. It has been 25 years since Roger Ulrich’s study showed that patients require less medication when views of nature are available. In the intervening years, however, meaningful landscapes hardly have been universal despite this indisputable and compelling science.
As landscape architects with a healthcare practice that includes urban and suburban hospitals, senior living, and specialty facilities, Mahan Rykiel Associates Inc. is seeing a number of emerging trends that indicate most facilities, in some way, now are incorporating a healthy environment as part of their design strategy. While sometimes these things may be incorporated simply to satisfy a required checklist, the result is still a healthier environment. Based in the mid-Atlantic, what Mahan Rykiel has seen isn’t necessarily universal, but from a boots-on-the-ground perspective, there are many things converging that indicate a tilt toward landscapes that are not only thoughtful and beautiful, but also good for people and the planet.
Trends
The certification process
Now more mandate than trend, GGHC and the newly launched LEED for Healthcare are indicators of this design shift toward health. These guidelines include not only the usual credits for site selection and connections to community, but also credits for exterior access for patients and for outdoor places of respite. These are entirely new credits that speak specifically to the undisputed benefits of the outdoors for patients, families, and staff.
In particular, the GGHC outlines the health issues involved in every single credit of the guideline. This is a powerful message to designers that every decision during planning and design has ramifications that can make a direct and positive impact on the people for whom the facility is actually designed.
Comments
Post new comment