Added value through design for healthcare facilities/buildings in Saudi Arabia within the legislative regulations of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

High-quality physical environments can promote health and well-being. A healthcare facility with an environment that is user centered, welcoming, and accessible, while also supporting staff and patient privacy and security has been found to enhance medical outcomes, and patient and staff comfort and well-being, which in turn have a positive effect on medical outcomes. The use of Evidence Based Designhas been shown to be of benefit to add value through design to a building . A comprehensive review of relevant literature was used to develop an understanding of the factors perceived to add value to a healthcare facility. Data were derived from two instruments an expert survey and a group AHP pairwise comparison survey. The findings of the first instrument resulted in validation of the factors, both directly and indirectly related to design, proposed in the literature and added insight into some culturally specific perceptions of factors which add value to a healthcare facility. The second instrument was a pairwise comparison of the six main design criteria and 25 related sub-factors to gain a multi-user perspective of their priority in adding value. The results from the first expert survey of the factors found in the literature and the AHP pairwise comparison survey were synthesized to develop a proposed framework to add value to healthcare facilities through building design . The framework was developed with consideration of factors indirectly impacted by design in addition to the design factors themselves. The proposed framework has six main criteria of Risk and Safety, Accessibility and Way-finding, Functionality, Cultural factors , Aesthetics, Comfort and Well-being and Cost with 25 sub-factors directly related to design of varied priority ranking found to add value to a healthcare facility within the Saudi Cultural context and presented in order of priority weighting . These were then related to their impact on the factors which add value to a healthcare facility which have been shown to be indirectly related to the healthcare facility design. Findings suggest that while perceptions of factors that add value are mostly in agreement with those found in other studies, that there are some culturally specific factors that need to be considered in order to design facilities that provide the greatest value, including patient rooms of a size and design that allow for a caretaker to be present and to accommodate for a large number of visitors, In addition, there is a need to consider the direction for the prayer and the need for signage to indicate it in the room layout. They also suggest that added value through design can have a positive effect on medical outcomes and the satisfaction and well-being of staff and patients.