August 2, 2006—With mounting evidence that shared hospital rooms contribute to medical errors, higher infection rates, privacy violations, and harmful stress for patients, the updated Guidelines for Design and Construction of Health Care Facilities by the American Institute for Architects (AIA) calls for single-patient rooms in medical/surgical and postpartum units to become standard for all newly constructed hospitals.
This is the first such recommendation since these guidelines were originally published by the federal government in 1947. Updated every four years by the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) and published by AIA, the guidelines are currently used by more than forty state governments to regulate hospital licensing and construction, says the Institute.
The 2006 guidelines include new sections on intermediate care units, observation units in emergency departments, and skilled nursing units in general hospitals; strengthened information on the Infection Control Risk Assessment process; and new chapters on urgent care facilities, gastrointestinal endoscopy facilities, psychiatric outpatient centers, renal dialysis centers, office surgical facilities, and small primary care hospitals.
According to the AIA Consensus Construction Forecast Panel report in June 2006, health care construction, the second largest institutional sector, accounts for more than 7 percent of nonresidential construction activity and is projected to increase 6.3 percent this year, followed by an additional 5.0 percent next year.
For more information, visit the AIA Web site.
