The -- NO Hidden Patient -- Hospital Design Model

The "NO Hidden Patient" Hospital Design Model is a webinar presentation of the safety and efficiency improvements and advantages offered by the "No Hidden Patient" model for healthcare facility design. 

Patient safety has become a hot-button issue in recent years with highly publicized medical errors drawing national attention as well as increased Joint Commission focus on preventing errors. Hospital design and management consultant Jeff Hardy attributes many patient safety problems due to the fact that patients are overlooked in “hidden patient rooms” throughout the hospital — in emergency departments, intensive care units, regular inpatient clinical care units, and in clinical service waiting areas, among others.

A key part of the problem, Hardy notes, is that many hospitals were not designed for today's older and more critical patients, whose hospital stays are shorter and more intense. At the same time, financial pressures under managed care are squeezing hospitals to precarious financial margins from higher costs and lower payments. The California Medical Association's recent “NO Hidden Patient” resolution notes most, if not all, of the hospitals that have recently been built, the $28 billion of hospitals being built today, along with the estimated $62 billion currently on drawing boards, have not raised the “maximum” bar high enough to meet the extraordinary patient safety, care and cost management conditions of today or tomorrow.

The “NO Hidden Patient” hospital — designed for maximum patient safety, maximum caregiver safety, maximum operational efficiency and maximum service response time — offers designers, hospitals and patients an optimum solution. This presentation discusses:

• Major trends and current clinical, operational and financial realities that dictate the need for a new-facility design model;
• “Hidden patient” schema of existing, recently-built and in-construction emergency departments, intensive care units and standard care units;
• The “maximum” model: “NO Hidden Patient” schema, drawings and photos;
• The reports: Substantiating documentation from State Department of Health reports and incident reports from patients and hospital staff that have been posted on the www.nohiddenpatient.com public access web site; and,
• A glimpse of the system-based operations design that takes advantage of the “NO Hidden Patient” facility design model to assure maximum operational efficiency, service response time and return on investment.

Webinar Learning Objectives

• Understand the significant patient safety, nurse safety and care communication advantages of the “NO Hidden Patient” hospital design model
• Assess the evidence and the statistics that support raising the "patient safety bar" to the highest, "maximum patient safety" notch;
• Discuss operational, financial and legal costs and benefits of the model
• Outline the "NOW Hospital" system-based operations model
• Compare actual “hidden patient” and “NO Hidden Patient” hospital designs
• Institute a “NO Hidden Patient” hospital planning and design process

About the Speaker

Jeff Hardy

Jeff Hardy, President, Healthcare Enterprise Development Services, is a veteran healthcare futurist, healthcare management and operations consultant and a new facility planning and design consultant. He is also the Executive Director of the Association for System-Based Healthcare. He has facilitated or participated in the planning and design of more than 80 hospitals in both the USA (for Kaiser, Catholic Healthcare West, HCA, Adventist, Disney Celebration, etc.) and in several countries (Bahrain, Curacao, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.).

He began his career 30-plus years ago as a hospital corpsman in the United States Coast Guard. He sold his hospital consulting company, XYDRA International, to a Fortune-500 firm in 1997 and now divides his time between hospital business and management consultation, new-facility planning and design, and the Association for System-Based Healthcare.