healthcare construction | outpatient services | Head

That's heartening to Cama and the others compiling the evidence for evidence-based design, particularly because healthcare construction is booming, and it's only going to continue to grow. Last year alone, hospitals spent more than $16 billion on new buildings and on renovating old ones, and that number is expected to reach $20 billion annually by decade's end, fueled in part by the expectation of baby boomer demand for healthcare and by the fact that new technology doesn't fit easily into vintage hospital buildings. "People thought outpatient services would take over hospitals, but instead, it just took all the patients who could be handled that way," Cama says. "We're still filling hospital beds, and because those patients are sicker, hospitals need to be more like ICUs than places to recoup for a few days. They need to be much more technologically advanced, so we have to build new buildings or renovate not-so-old buildings."

If ideas about better-built hospitals are going to bear fruit over the next several decades, they have to get into those new buildings. The window of opportunity is open.

My brother calls to talk about Dad's status. I tell him they moved Dad from the room with the view of that lone tree to one overlooking an atrium. The view from his bed: a brick wall. If you stand close to the window and look down, you see the top of a statue of the Virgin Mary, her open palms from this angle appearing more like a gesture of uncertainty - a shrug - than comfort or invitation. The flowers are wilting. It's dark. My brother recalls his own experience in an ICU, where the only window was over the head of his bed. "You get to feeling cut off from reality," he tells me. "You get a little crazy."