Not quite this small.
Hospitals & Health Networks has done an update on the rapidly increasing number of microhospitals, facilities that bridge the gap between ambulatory and tertiary care.
H&HN reports, for example, that “PhiloWilke Partnership, Houston, has designed approximately 25 microhospital facilities in the last eight years, with 20 more on the books, according to Kevin TenBrook, partner at the firm.”
“It’s definitely expanding at the moment,” he said.
H&HN notes that “they can be distributed throughout a region to support a network of care; they also can be designed to be scalable, to grow along with a burgeoning community.”
David Argueta, an executive with CHI-St. Luke’s in Texas, told the news service that microhospitals are, in H&HN’s paraphrase, “an innovative solution for delivering hospital care where it’s needed, to meet a healthcare organization’s strategic goals and its mission as a care provider. In short, efficient, well-placed microhospitals can achieve the healthcare trifecta of ‘best value, high quality, lower cost,’ he says.”
Kevin Harney, AIA, NCARB, principal at architecture firm ESa, in Nashville, told H&HN that microhospitals are mostly 15,000 to 25,000 square feet, although they can be up 60,000 square feet. “They typically include eight to 10 inpatient beds, eight to 10 emergency department (ED) treatment bays, a small imaging and diagnostic suite and support functions like dietary services, environmental services and materials management,” the news service said.
Rod Booze, partner in the Texas office of healthcare architecture firm E4H, told H&HN that the facilities perform, in H&HN’s words, “essentially the same functions as standard-sized hospitals, but are scaled to respond to the needs of lower-acuity patients.
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