Designing for quality: hospitals look to the built environment to provide better patient care and outcomes.

With recent shifts in the marketplace, hospital boards and administrators are increasing their focus on building new facilities or renovating old ones. But rather than stick with models of the past, many of them are beginning to look at the built hospital environment as a way to promote healing, improve clinical outcomes, enhance patient safety, increase patient satisfaction, and reduce costs. At the same time, they also are finding that when changing the physical structure, they must change the internal culture of the organization as well.