Healthcare Design Assessment Tools

Tools that help healthcare managers and designers:

• Understand what patients want from the built environment
• Enhance the design process through consumer involvement
• Build patient-centered environments
• Improve design quality and consumer satisfaction

The Patient Environmental Checklist can be used to assess an existing facility's strong and weak points.  The checklist asks patients to rate specific features of the environment that are important to them and their family members, using a 5-point scale.  This self-assessment tool can be used to quickly identify areas in need of improvement.  It can also serve as an impetus for discussion about new construction or renovation projects.

A Patient Survey elicits ratings and reports about patients' actual experiences with the built environment, offering a much richer understanding of the issue of most importance to patients in a particular setting.  This perspective is critical, since patients' priorities may be very different from those of administrators or designers.

Information from the checklist and patient survey helps facility managers identify priorities and strategies for building projects.  At this point, Focus Groups with consumers can help facility representatives learn more about their specific concerns and generate ideas for possible solutions.  Focus groups are also useful in evaluating consumers' perceptions about proposed or completed projects.

Note:  The contact information for The Center for Health Design and Picker Institute in these documents are out of date.