How will we ever be able to afford any of this?
The goal of Patient Room 2020 is to inspire what could be possible, not to prescribe exactly what is going to happen in the not-so-distant future. Think of it as a concept car that is rolled out each year: There is an initial “wow” factor from a provocative concept that draws both positive and negative media attention. Between the unveiling of the concept and entry into the market, the product is transformed, sometimes dramatically, in order to become viable.
Many of the current ideas in Patient Room 2020 represent a hypothesis within a larger experiment. The next step is building and testing the ideas to prove their validity. Many of the added construction costs may be negated if we are able to provide evidence that these concepts are effective at improving patient outcomes.
For example, if the use of solid surface material is proven to reduce the incidence of hospital acquired infections by 50%, then the payback for using that material might be less than five years when factoring in costs related to readmission, lawsuits due to wrongful death, and staff workers compensation claims. Conversely, should testing show that these materials do not affect the rate of HAI’s, the design team will advocate its removal from the room design. Cost should be directly tied to performance, but we won’t know how things perform if we don’t take risks and test new ideas rigorously.
In the meantime, know that many core ideas in the project do have proven potential for widespread use across any hospital system, some of which are already being used in existing hospital settings.