Quick Take with Marty Fifer

There are three major challenges impacting healthcare nationally from a building perspective and personnel perspective—the cost of capital infrastructure, planning for flexibility, and staff shortages. 

The biggest opportunity is speed-to-market delivery methods to reduce construction cost and right-sizing care platforms that can flexibly adapt to different patient volumes, care delivery, and staff count. We tap into our own market intelligence and design research to identify cost-saving opportunities throughout the planning and construction process to meet these challenges. 

It gets down to designing spaces that are efficient and supportive for the caregivers. Healthcare design is somewhat personal for me. I learned the importance of good design from my mother, who worked as a nurse and always stressed how space can enhance—or hinder—her ability to bring care to patients. 

Absolutely. Good design is often about addressing real challenges. Designing for efficiency and offering areas of respite—allowing nurses and caregivers to get away and decompress—can heighten job satisfaction and reduce burnout that leads to staff shortages. 

It’s also about creating environments that support patient needs, and different patient types. Getting back to my earlier reference, I remember touring an Alzheimer’s care facility where my mother worked. She pointed out specific interior design details that affect a dementia patient’s behavior. It was a great first-hand learning experience. Understanding the patient’s experience is part of the bigger picture, in which we approach design holistically from multiple perspectives. 

Everything we do impacts the larger community. That’s why we must include all appropriate voices and stakeholders in the design process. Our work with Cedars-Sinai’s new Emergency Department in Los Angeles is an example. It touches so many different people in a diverse urban area. We have done multiple projects with Cedars-Sinai over the years, so we have had the opportunity to get to know them and their communities well. 

We’re growing our team. Since I’ve been here, we’ve almost doubled our Southern California presence. Yet it’s not just the numbers. It’s the levels of expertise that we‘re bringing in. Our team members are amazing people. They give me the motivation to do this job. And this means we can deliver even better resources for our clients.