Building on the success of 'Healthcare Spaces', 'Healthcare Spaces 2' is another invitation to visit impressive new work by some of the leading architects and interior designers serving America's health care institutions.
Healthcare administrators, physicians, medical planners and their architects and interior designers will find this an excellent way to assess how public and private institutions are coping with the opportunities and challenges of managed care, advances in medical science and technology, aging populations and the drive towards patient-focussed care.
What these installations strikingly reveal - in projects ranging from neighbourhood clinics, surgery centres and medical offices, to replacement hospitals and vast medical campuses - is a profound change in the delivery of health care. America's determination to contain health care, for example, is hastening the shift from inpatient care to ambulatory services, specialisation to target specific needs of service area populations, and consolidation by independent institutions into regional networks.
However, the news is also about advances in medical science and technology, which have triggered new forms of facilities and improved care, based on competition for patients and physicians and acceptance of psychoneuroimmunology - the therapeutic impact that physical environment can have on patient outcomes.
