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Executive Brief
“What we need most at this stage in the evolution of American health care is a compelling demonstration of a community care system that works. We need to initiate design changes from the bottom-up. We need to focus upon what we can do at the local level that will serve as a model for other communities to emulate. Several of these prototype demonstrations across America would provide a road map for the design of new comprehensive federal health legislation.” – Leland R. Kaiser, PhD
A Healthy Village would also deliver educational benefits with ongoing community outreach programs including: health and wellness education designed for employees in corporations, first-time parenting classes, care for the aging parent, smoking cessation, healthy cooking classes, and other related Healthy programs for all ages.
Finally, a Healthy Village would be forward-thinking, designed specifically for the people it serves with a flexible infrastructure that would allow all who are involved in a hospital system to provide holistic, personalized, health and wellness services. It would become a dynamic destination and village center within the greater community.
Why a Healthy Village?
Healthcare as Community: The Healthy Village will be tight-knit and will create ease of access to all of our health needs; physician centers, rehabilitation services, prevention, healthy lifestyle support, imaging centers, pharmacy and lab services. Information systems and processes will create a benchmark in the creation of an integrated care model that would provide seamless health care delivery.
Centers of Excellence: Patient care evolves around physician-based medical centers within the Healthy Village. A strategic mix of practitioners will address a wide variety of health and wellness needs with the possibility of long or short-stay hospital functions as an extension of the physician practices. It will support an environment that can provide technology and required health and wellness services.
Personalized Care: Patient care evolves around physician-based medical centers within the Healthy Village. A strategic mix of practitioners will address a wide variety of health and wellness needs with the possibility of long or short-stay hospital functions as an extension of the physician practices. It will support an environment that can provide technology and required health and wellness services.
Innovation for Healthcare
Enduring Value: A Healthy Village will be founded and sustained by the development of a culture of innovation. It’s approach will be supported by three major pathways:
- The first pathway will be for new innovations in the community that create health and improve the quality of life. Generally these initiatives will not replace or supplement existing community obligations, but rather extend leadership efforts in healthy communities.
- The second pathway will target new business start-ups and brand new revenue sources for the Village. This will be an organized function that has as its’ primary focus the development of new profits and revenue that will help offset the declining reimbursement of other acute care operations.
- The third pathway will target everyone in operations and will have as its’ major focus a product line, and customer service differentiation. In this way, innovation is more like a verb than a noun and becomes “How we create value and excellence for our customers.”
What Makes Up a Healthy Village?
In addition to industry-leading health and wellness services, Healthy Village consumers will also enjoy access to the Village’s many other amenities. These may potentially include a pharmacy, medical library, Internet stations, child day care center, restaurants and café’s, healthy-living bookstore, fitness facilities, salon and spas and other related consumer conveniences. Additional service offerings would include: retail, senior housing and living options within the continuum of care.
The Healthy Village would also offer educational and community outreach programs to patients, covering such topics as first-time parenting classes, care for aging parents, smoking cessation courses, healthy cooking classes, and many other valuable health programs that target key community needs
To meet the health and wellness needs of its visitors, the Village can contain a number of state-of-the-art facilities, including:
- Ambulatory Primary and Secondary Care Short- stay Hospital
- Women’s Center
- Men’s Center
- Children’s Center
- Primary Care Center
- Heart and Lung Center
- Cancer Care Center
- Orthopedic Center / Rehabilitation Center
- Fitness Center
- Specialty Care Center
- Complementary Medicine Centers
- Health Education Center
- Surgery / Procedure Center
- Retail Center
- Assisted / Independent Living Housing
- Skilled Care
- Hospice
  
click on any of the photos to see it full size
  
How Does a Healthy Village Operate?
An Innovative Model - For All Needs: The Healthy Village is an innovative model of ambulatory health, set in a “village” design concept that will be a magnet for health care consumers in the new Millennium. The Healthy Village is a one-stop destination to meet families’ health needs and lifestyle. Each Health Care Village would be custom-designed and programmed to meet the specific needs of the community it serves. It would offer a comprehensive array of primary and secondary care, with physician-based centers of excellence in either a short-stay or traditional hospital setting. The village would also incorporate health-related retail and allied services for its patients, including day care, healthy kitchen and fitness centers. Its main mission: to be a health resource for both physicians and their patients.
Services offered by the Healthy Village will be those that can be successfully supported by the practitioners of the village and the surrounding medical community. This integrated delivery system in a diverse facility would be modeled on other successful integratedcare hospitals. Unlike traditional hospitals, services will be performed where they are needed most; imaging and laboratory services will be located on the Healthy Village campus and not a twenty-minute drive to the “medical center.”
Providing a Better Healthcare Experience
Implementing a “Healthy” Vision: To achieve its Vision, the Healthy Village is a unique and inspiring environment in which primary and secondary medical care is provided, wellness and related educational services are offered and health-related ancillary, retail, and community centers are featured. The Healthy Village would support an easy-to-access ambulatory care campus with the “village” feeling. This “village” environment combines specialized clinics, physician offices, ambulatory surgery and a wealth of health-related amenities which will be a magnet for the community it serves.
Depending on the needs of each community, the Healthy Village would provide a specific number of skilled physicians and other allied health professionals who treat all but the most intensive health needs. Equally important, these caregivers operate in a setting ensuring seamless integration of all of the services offered within the Village, thereby making patients’ visits more effective and efficient.
Building a Better Business Foundation
Hospitals Need a New Physician Relations Strategy: A Healthy Village offers hospitals a better competitive strategy to maintain and expand market share in the community. This center for community health returns lost specialty procedures and restores physician loyalty. It is an effective counter- response to other investment opportunities now being offered to physicians by competitors. Within the Healthy Village concept, hospital systems, physicians and the community benefit from a coordinated health care system.
Creates a Innovative Capital Solution
A Healthy Village is a better capital solution for hospitals, in part due to the fact that investment groups can bring “off-balance sheet” financing to the project at various levels. This depends on the needs of the hospital sponsors. Possible shared ownership with physicians can reduce the hospital’s upfront costs, while the hospital and ambulatory care providers can reach break-even and profitability more rapidly under new management models. With increased physician commitment, volumes can increase revenues, promote financial success. This would then result in the increase of financial contributions to community health care delivery. Other fiscal benefits of the Healthy Village include improving the payer mix with more fee-for-service business. And most importantly, a village can increase tertiary care referrals and keep referrals “in the system.”
Creating the Ideal Patient Experience
A Business Care for a Healthy Village: A Healthy Village is an economic and strategic partnership of the hospitals, medical centers and physicians which will succeed due to physician loyalty, patient satisfaction and better health outcomes. The Healthy Village is designed to respond to the pressures facing hospitals today, which include:
- Patient dissatisfaction with their hospital experience
- Lost market share to low cost outpatient specialty facilities
- Stressed hospital-physician relationships
- Decreasing physician loyalty resulting in entrepreneurship
Health and Wellness Made Easy
Most importantly, guests will benefit from the village providing an array of healthy products and services in one convenient location. This would meet all of their health and wellness needs, while catering to each individual’s specific lifestyle. For example, all operations are internal so patients can easily see their physicians, get lab and imaging results and take advantage of wellness programs. Together patients and physicians will enjoy the benefits of an integrated partnership in their health and wellness journey.
“People want a more comprehensive clinic, better diagnostic services, and better emergency and immediate care, but they also want something that helps prevent needing those services; which is where the wellness component comes in. Our plans for NorthPointe were to create a campus that combines comprehensive services with preventative wellness components.” – Greg Britton, CEO Beloit Memorial Hospital
Project Description: Plunkett Raysich Architects completed a campus master plan for a new, free-standing Health and Wellness Campus for Beloit Memorial Hospital. The campus plan identified implementation of 168,000 sq. ft. of complementary health and wellness facilities comprised of a health & wellness pavilion, fitness center (NorthPointe Wellness) and an assisted living center that takes advantage of the natural surroundings.
- The new health and wellness pavilion contains complementary health and wellness services that include clinical services, diagnostic services, immediate care and community health education
- The new fitness center (NorthPointe Wellness) houses an aquatic center, athletic gym, exercise gym, rehabilitation gym, health education rooms, child care and child daycare
- The new 24-unit Assisted Living Center is a single-story facility expandable to 48 units giving residents access to activity rooms, central dining rooms, beauty salon and health & wellness room
Scope: Master planning and implementation of a 168,000 sq. ft. campus
Owner: Beloit Memorial Hospital 1969 W. Hart Road Beloit, WI 53511
Read the Executive Brief
"Healthy Village"
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