The Elimination of Transfer Distances Is an Important Part of Hospital Design

Objective:The objective of the present study was to describe how a specific patient flow analysis with from-to charts can be used in hospital design and layout planning.Background:As part of a large renewal project at a university hospital, a detailed patient flow analysis was applied to planning the musculoskeletal surgery unit (orthopedics and traumatology, hand surgery, and plastic surgery).Method:First, the main activities of the unit were determined. Next, the routes of all patients treated over the course of 1 year were studied, and their physical movements in the current hospital were calculated. An ideal layout of the new hospital was then generated to minimize transfer distances by placing the main activities with close to each other, according to the patient flow analysis. The actual architectural design was based on the ideal layout plan. Finally, we compared the current transfer distances to the distances patients will move in the new hospital.Results:The methods enabled us to estimate an appr...