A Hospital Designed for Patients?
A hospital building can feel timeless. While the halls echo with the sound of ultramodern equipment, basic structural ideas might be familiar to the first practitioners of modern medicine in the 19th century, or to some degree, even the denizens of Europe’s first hospitals in the Middle Ages. Yet each era has left its mark on the way these buildings are built and used—some for the better, some for the worse.
In this day of fiscal restraint for health care, government cutbacks, and pre- authorization there are few new hospitals being built. Most new construction is for building additions, rehabilitating old structures or adding on a 'Center for Excellence".
The Covid19 pandemic stimulated interest in constructing expandable hospital structures which could be easily increase hospital capacity, and mothballed when not in use. Most current hospital structures were augmeneted by pop up tents, awnings, or trailers for triage and isolating sick from well patients. Other than providing shelter from the sun or rain, they provided little in the way of utilities, water, electric or sterile areas. Many were set up as drive through access to expedite services.
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