First in a series based on the IMEG executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-driven Decisions in the Built Environment.” A related podcast can be found at the end of this post.

By Mike Zorich 

Numerous healthcare organizations have adopted the guiding principles of the Quadruple Aim, a framework for healthcare excellence that focuses on improving population health, reducing the cost of care, enhancing the patient experience, and improving provider satisfaction. For a variety of reasons, however, many of these organizations are missing out on opportunities to support these desired outcomes through an intentionally designed, data-driven built environment.    

In response to this lack of synchronization, IMEG and healthcare data analyst firm linear A recently released the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-driven Decisions in the Built Environment.” In it, we examine the Quadruple Aim, define the built environment (a holistic term that includes architecture, engineering, acoustics, aesthetics, etc.), and provide concrete examples of how the built environment can support, enhance, and help organizations achieve each goal of the Quadruple Aim.  

Some of the strategies provided are obvious, while others are much more subtle. For example: 

• Energy-efficient LED lighting can enhance the patient experience, support staff satisfaction through better light quality, and improve population health through reduced energy usage and associated pollution 
• Natural elements and the space they occupy, such as a garden in a courtyard, become an extension of the building and the built environment, enhancing the healing and calming aesthetic of the hospital 

By encouraging stakeholders, architects, designers, and builders to buy into a healthcare organization’s vision early and keep the Quadruple Aim in mind at every stage of design and construction, the resulting built environment can effortlessly contribute to positive outcomes inside and outside its walls. Framing design decisions and their impact to the Quadruple Aim allows health systems to truly align their operational and capital strategies in an impactful and meaningful way.  

Listen to the podcast:

Also in this series:

• Improving population health through the built environment
• Reducing the cost of care in the built environment
• Enhancing the patient experience through the built environment 
• Improving provider satisfaction through the built environment

For more information, download a copy of the IMEG executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-driven Decisions in the Built Environment.”