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Design Solutions To Improve Waiting Rooms
When it comes to Healthcare Design, there are a lot of things to worry about. Waiting rooms are no exception. The patient-centered focus in healthcare design ultimately changed the way waiting rooms were designed. Designing the waiting room from the patient’s perspective helped modify the design approach and the elements the deemed important.
In the past, the planning process was to fit as many seats as code would allow while accommodating the particular needs of the sick. Now, it is much more. The waiting room as seen as an opportunity to sooth and calm those in it.
Nurturing the Sick
When the sick come to the hospital, they are without a doubt stressed out. Waiting can increase that stress because patients are often nervous about the appointment and anxious about all of the unknowns. One way we can nurture the patients and address their feelings is to create a space with comfortable chairs, intimate seating arrangement that reduce noise and offer privacy. Adding several televisions to each space serves as a welcome distraction and allows people to freely change the channel and watch what they want.
Another approach to a better waiting room experience is to eliminate the need for waiting altogether.
Eliminate the Need for Waiting
Studies and surveys show that patients waiting more than 15 minutes for a scheduled appointment start to become disgruntled and their perception of service drops dramatically. There is a new program called Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CGCAHPS) that surveys patient experience and pays healthcare institutions and medical providers a reimbursement if patients wait for less than 15 minutes. We can bet that this approach will become more and more popular.
Designers Help Address Issues
Designers will continue to help address the issues of waiting in waiting rooms. Our goal is to make the waiting experience more pleasant and to further the goals of the healthcare administration. Trends change, patient needs change and products change. It is our job to keep up with the ever changing environment of healthcare and interior design.
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