Modular Medical Facility Construction: A Quicker Way to Build
With an increasing overall population, as well as an aging one, the United State's healthcare industry is set to keep increasing in size and spending for the foreseeable future. Currently, the US per capita health spending for 2018 sits close to $12,000, but that figure is projected to increase to around $16,000 by 2026.
As more patients fill hospitals and more healthcare space is needed, new facilities will need to be built or existing spaces will need to be renovated.
For many medical facilities, the need for more space can be urgent. In this case, hospitals will often opt for a renovation in order to help address their new space needs in a more timely and cost-effective manner.
When Does A Medical Facility Need a Renovation?
Designing a hospital can be difficult. It is tough to predict how a building's layout is going to fit in with healthcare developments decades down the road. These developments can range from an influx of new patients to integrating new technologies in your facility.
For example, when installing new equipment in a medical facility, the equipment could need a specific environment in order to function properly. In this case, the facility will likely have to redesign an area in order to support this new technology.
On the other hand, a hospital may just be growing in their number of overall patients. Even if they have enough rooms for everyone, a growing number of patients will often signal an increase in the amount of staff on hand. At a certain point, when these two populations grow large enough, the current layout of the facility will become inefficient.
Fitting too many people and services into a confined space can lead to ineffective care, while heavy traffic flows among patients and staff can lead to slow response times and even potential injuries. In these cases, a hospital renovation can oftentimes be your best solution as it provides a "quick fix" for facilities.
However, renovations can cause a lot of disruption for a medical facility...
How Can Panel Built Help?
Panel Built's panelized wall systems provide a quick and convenient alternative to traditional construction renovations. Using our panel and binder post system, new patient, equipment, or staff rooms can be configured in whatever layout fits the facility best.
But the biggest benefit for hospitals using Panel Built to help with renovations?...
The can be re-used and re-configured into a different layout in the future.
So, if the facility decides that it needs another renovation further down the road, by utilizing Panel Built's modular wall system, they can easily remodel the space entirely. However, there are other benefits as well!
Traditional construction renovations can provide a number of issues for hospital and other medical environments. First, they can create a large amount of noise for the building. This can present a big problem for both the patients in the hospital and the staff.
For the patients, this excess noise can lead to increasing health problems. For the staff, the accelerate can lead to difficulty in communication and errors. And the noise leads to an increase in stress levels for both.
With Panel Built's wall system, they can be installed at a much lower decibel level than a traditional construction site with primarily a hand drill needed to fully install.
What about New Construction?
Modular construction has been growing as a construction method in the past decade with the hospitality industry seeing the most usage. Marriott announced that modular construction would be used to accelerate their growth by using it to complete up to 50 new hotels in one year!.
In the case of hotels and apartment buildings, dozens of identical rooms are able to be built off-site and then put into place on the job site with a crane. These companies have chosen to go modular because they are able to cut 12 to 14 months off of their construction time, allowing them to get the hotel up and running faster.
If hospitals and medical facilities took the same approach with some of their new construction projects, new facilities could take advantage of the economies of scale and quick project times that modular construction provides.
In the medical industry, more and more attention is placed on the aesthetics of the hospital. This is done in order to draw in patients and staff from other facilities. The lavish style of the buildings also provides the aura of a "high-end" and professional establishment.
A common misconception is that modular construction cannot match this type of aesthetics. However, modular construction is commonly used in luxury building projects and deluxe hotels. In fact, you can look at our Best Modular Construction Projects of 2018 to see some of the nicest projects from last year!
Panel Built can Help Here Too
Panel Built provides a variety of products that can easily be incorporated into new construction projects. Modular guard booths, generator enclosures, equipment buildings, entry vestibules, catwalks, prefab stairs, the list goes on...
Similar to the stackable units used in hotel modular construction, our buildings can be delivered to the job site fully assembled, or they can be conveniently assembled on site.
For our pre-assembled buildings, the are built on top of a forkliftable steel base, so when they are unloaded, all that is lead is to place them in their spot, anchor the building, and hook up the electric. At that point, the building is good to go.
Whether the medical facility is looking to renovate an existing medical facility or looking to build a brand new facility altogether, consider incorporating modular construction. Panel Built has completed thousands of jobs working with general contractors on successful projects.
If you're interested in using Panel Built in your next medical facility project, just give us a call at 800.636.3873 or send us an email to info@panelbuilt.com. We are happy to talk and discuss some of our many modular products and how they can help you on your next project.