A smart, sustainable approach to hospital design
Sustainable hospital design can slash operating costs while boosting patient care, says Integral Group’s Andrew Mather. But more modelling must be undertaken up front to get the best outcomes.
Green hospitals conserve energy and water, making them cheaper to operate.
What’s less known is that green hospitals are also better places for people, reducing patients’ average length of stay, and decreasing staff sick leave and turnover.
The Mackenzie Health’s Centre for Behaviour Health Sciences in Canada, for example, found that sunny rooms helped patients suffering from depression to recover 15 per cent faster than those in darker rooms.
Patients in sunlit rooms at the Inha University Hospital in South Korea spent 41 per cent less time in hospital than those in gloomy rooms.
And better ventilation, light and views of nature, as well as music and private rooms, at Michigan’s Bronson Methodist Hospital delivered an 11 per cent reduction in secondary infections and a decrease in nursing turnover rates.
“Achieving these outcomes should be possible on every new hospital project – but we need a more integrated approach to design to make it happen,” says Mather, Integral Group’s managing director in Sydney, Australia.
Mather says more modelling should be conducted “up front” to get the best outcomes for patients, staff and the taxpayer.
“Advancements in technology, particularly building information modelling, enables us to do more of the exploratory work a lot quicker and easier than ever before,” Mather says.
“Only a few years ago, putting together a model was an expensive exercise. Today, because everyone is designing on the same BIM platform, it is easy to take the design and run it through a thermal comfort or daylight model.”
Mather says upfront modelling is done “far more frequently” in the United States than Australia.
“In Australia, what tends to happen is the architects come up with a concept design for a hospital, and present that design to the engineers. By that time, the form and orientation of the hospital is set.
“Then, the modelling tends to be used to prove it meets design parameters such as Green Star requirements or the Building Code.
“A more integrated approach sees the architects and engineers work together to model the thermal comfort, daylight, and other sustainability elements. From there, we can make adjustments to the building’s orientation, façade detail or shape to provide more daylight, for example.”
Mather says the message is clear.
“An integrated design approach – where all the professionals work cohesively and collaboratively together from the start – delivers a healthier, more sustainable hospital.”
Integral Group is a global network of design professionals collaborating under a single deep green engineering umbrella. The company’s founder and chief executive officer Kevin Hydes is a former chair of the US Green Building Council and World Green Building Council, and a founder and director of CanadaGBC.
Located in sixteen offices across North America, the United Kingdom and Australia, Integral Group is accelerating the shift towards environmentally responsive design by making sustainable designs affordable. Learn more about Integral Group online.