Significant measures to reduce risks, lower costs and improve quality of care can be realized with “process-driven” design and planning, according to an article on the Medical Construction & Design website.
For instance, better work flow can improve surgical center sterile processing
In a recent project at an ambulatory ophthalmologic surgical center, one of the top design priorities was to modify the sterile processing department to include safe processing of eye instruments.
Ideally, intraocular instruments would be cleaned separately from nonophthalmologic surgical instruments at the facility, but an initial assessment of conditions indicated that lack of physical separation resulted in multiple opportunities for cross-contamination.