The first rule of medicine is to "do no harm," but what about medical facilities? What responsibility do today's healthcare to do no harm to the world in which their patients reside?
This was the question poised in an article from AMFP vice president Chris Roberts, Healthcare Global Solutions Architect for Schneider Electric, published in the September/October 2019 issue of Medical Construction + Design Magazine. The article, Committing to Buildings That Do No Harm, describes the balance of delivering low-cost care in communities with reducing the health impact of more buildings on these populations.
"Improving the performance of these buildings is critical because you can't have good health without a clean environment," comments AMFP vice president Walt Vernon, CEO of Mazzetti, in the article. "There are health impacts from products of combustion, such as boilers and generators. Antibiotics in water streams increase organisms' ability to adapt and create drug-resistant pathogens. The list goes on."
Roberts notes that by planning, designing and constructing buildings in a way that maximizes people's abilities to live their lives outside of healthcare facilities, real estate strategy plays an enormous role in supporting improved population health and social sustainability.
Read the full article here.