By Healthcare Facilities Today

Forward-thinking design elements are good for the health of the patients as well as the health of the hospital's budget, says the chair of the Center for Health Design in a recent Healthcare Finance News article.

In this era of doing more with less, this realization is increasingly important, according to Roz Cama, board chair of the Center for Health Design and president and principal interior designer of Cama, Inc., a healthcare design firm.

For many years it was difficult to get hospital executives interested in the concept of certain healthcare building design features, as well as “green” initiatives that could have a substantial impact on a hospital’s long-term bottom line and ROI, said Cama in the article.

“It seemed we had to find a direct correlation between design and patient outcomes,” said Cama. One of those correlations came when it was realized that having single-patient rooms resulted in better patient outcomes because fewer people in a room reduced the spread of infection. “This caught peoples’ attention and for the first time we could build the business case,” Cama said.

Read the article.