Healthcare facilities like hospitals are one of the most critical structures we rely on daily. Medical facilities exist to provide us with the utmost treatment and care we need for our well-being. Without them, the world would become a place of suffering, and the contagious spreading of vital viruses would prevail.
And so, maintaining facilities at their best is the goal of almost every healthcare industry worldwide. Many stakeholders decide to work on hospital expansion plans to address the issues that a hospital might be experiencing and affecting patients’ stay within the premises.
The thing is, working on a hospital expansion plan is a rigorous process. Every detail you include should be feasible and solve the problems that health workers and patients are experiencing. In short, your hospital expansion plan should provide a better hospital experience for all.
If you’ve been planning to work on a hospital expansion plan to pitch to your shareholders, this post is for you. Here are five things to consider when working on a hospital expansion plan.
1 – Consider listing the problems and issues you want to solve in the hospital before anything else.
To create a strategic and well-researched plan, you must first know the problems you want to solve. A hospital expansion plan’s purpose is to provide solutions to existing issues affecting the hospital. If you don’t recognise those problems first, your expansion plan won’t likely be able to provide the solutions that the hospital needs.
With that, you must list the existing problems and issues you see in the hospital. These issues are the fuel that will drive your plan to come up with the best solution for the hospital. If you can’t recognise these problems, there’s no reason to work on an expansion plan.
Regardless of how small or big you think the concern is, list every issue you have in mind. Once you’ve finished your list, you can review and remove the ones you think don’t need any action.
2 – Consider interviewing and collaborating with health professionals and long-term inpatients about the issues they see in the hospital.
Now that you have a list of all the issues you think need to be addressed in the hospital, it’s time to ask the people who experience them daily. If you’re someone who doesn’t stay in the hospital daily and just visits from time to time, it’s necessary to get the opinion of the people who experience it every day.
After finalising your list, you must schedule an interview with at least five to ten health professionals from different departments. Ask them how’s their stay and workflow in the hospital daily. If there are any problems they’re experiencing, clarify what those are. Ask them what they think would be the best solution for those issues.
After you interview the health professionals, it’s time to get the opinion of long-term inpatients. Ask them the same questions you’ve asked the health workers. Get their ideas on what they think would make their stay better in the hospital. When you have the answers to these, it’ll be easier to map out and know the issues you should tackle more in your hospital expansion plan.
3 – Consider evaluating the hospital’s existing systems with the help of professionals.
Now that you have reliable information regarding the issues that people in the hospital are facing, it’s time to consult these issues with professionals. The best thing to know whether it’s worth undergoing an expansion plan is by discussing it with professionals first.
With that, you must consider scheduling an inspection and evaluation with engineers and designers about the issues you want to address in the hospital. The opinions of the engineers and designers will help you plan more efficiently about the spaces that will address future concerns that the hospital might have.
Your engineers and designers will also help you decide if the plans you have in mind are feasible and if they’re necessary at the moment. If, for example, the existing electrical, piping, and technology used in the hospital are still in their best condition, you might want to revise your plan and instead prioritise other issues. Doing so will help you allocate the plan’s budget accordingly.
4 – Weigh the pros and cons of the expansion plan in terms of hospital operations, patients’ experience, and profit flow.
After you consult the engineer and designer about your plan, it’s time to consider the pros and cons of the expansion plan. Even though expansion plans aim to provide solutions to improving the hospital’s services, they will have some cons once the project starts.
With that, you must consider every pro and con that the expansion plan will bring to the hospital. Evaluate how the expansion plan would affect the hospital’s operation, patients’ experience, and profit flow. By doing this, you’ll be able to provide and think of ways to mitigate the pros that the plan could bring.
Remember, the purpose of hospitals is to provide treatment and care. Your plan should be able to deliver that seamlessly regardless of the ongoing expansion project.
5 – Consider if your overall plan is feasible with the hospital’s budget.
Lastly, consider if your overall plan is feasible with the hospital’s budget. Even though it may seem like the hospital could easily manage the financial aspect of an expansion plan, that’s not the case. Budget allocation is not an easy task for hospital management. Why? Because the funds need to be approved first, while some need a loan for the budget.
With that, evaluate and consider that every aspect of your hospital expansion plan is feasible physically and financially with the hospital’s budget. You must assess that each service in your expansion plan will drive profit in the long run. Reexamine the other things that would only cause a profit loss in the future.
By doing this, you’ll be able to review your expansion plan better and prioritise the projects that would benefit the hospital long term.
Make sure to consider that every aspect of your plan will benefit the stakeholders for the best.
Hopefully, these five considerations I shared will help you refine and reevaluate your hospital expansion plan better. Whether your expansion plan is for a pitch or a study, ensure that every stakeholder is the ultimate beneficiary. Again, consider that every aspect of your expansion plan will benefit them for the better.
About the author:
Bianca Banda is a writer for Flex by MTX, a privately owned construction and engineering company that relentlessly champions the use of Modern Methods of Construction for social, economic, and environmental good.
