A STUDY OF PATIENT’S REQUIREMENTS ON HOSPITAL BUILDING FACILITIES

Abstract

In this era of globalisation and fierce competition amongst businesses, customer expectations and perception of facilities of healthcare buildings have created challenges and significant pressures on healthcare industry. High quality built environment is recognised as an integral part of the patients’ satisfaction. Many researchers havestudied about patient’s satisfaction focusing especially on services provided by the healthcare sector. Moreover, few researchers have suggested that recognition of patient’s requirements as a first step in developing a right strategy to maximise their satisfaction. However, patient’s requirements and preferences of facilities in hospital buildings have not been identified and evaluated in order to achieve their satisfaction, particularly in Sri Lankan context. The aim of this study is therefore to identify and evaluate patient’s requirements related to hospital building facilities in Sri Lankan healthcare sector. Research methodology was comprised with literature review, preliminary survey and structured interviews with in-patients and healthcare sector practitioners to identify patient’s facility requirements and indicators of hospital buildings. Data collection was limited to in-patient’s facility requirements of private sector hospitals located in Colombo in Sri Lanka. Multi-criteria decision making method, which is Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) tool was applied to analyse and prioritise patient’s requirements and facility indicators under each patient’s requirements. According to the survey findings, ‘Patient’s Room Facility’ is the most important patient’s requirement followed by ‘Security and Safety’, ‘Indoor Environmental Quality ’, ‘Visual Comfort’, ‘Internal Accessibility’ and ‘External Accessibility’. Survey further identified, ‘Space Utility’ as the least important patient’s requirements of hospital buildings in Sri Lanka. “Prioritised Patient’s Facility Requirement Model” developed in this study can be used as a guideline in planning, decision making and resource allocation in improving the hospital facilities in order to achievepatient’s satisfaction in future.

Key Words: Hospital Building Facilities, Patient’s Requirements, Satisfaction, Healthcare, Built Environment

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk