Case Studies

Healthcare Insights: Navigating Shifting Terrain in Pediatric Care

This article is included in the Great Things: Issue 7 edition of the DPR Newsletter.

Navigating Pediatric Care

Click here to Download the White Paper →

We will recover from the pandemic. As the pandemic’s long-term effects become clearer, discussions around the pediatric patient’s and family’s needs will drive the future of pediatric care and influence real estate, design, and construction decisions to support this evolution. With this in mind, we look at a new strategic framework focused on changing definitions of value to enable pediatric providers and their facilities to emerge stronger.

The Pediatric Patient’s Needs Are Changing, Now What?

Real estate industry trends tend to overestimate change in the short run and underestimate it in the long run. In the case of the pandemic, many trends evolved more quickly in weeks than they had in the last decade. During this time, people began asking:

  • What motivates me?
  • What is important to me?
  • How does the world around me address these new needs?

Whether or not people realize it, values, needs, and expectations have changed, and pediatric providers need to leapfrog standard expectations and address the explicit and implicit needs for providing care.

DPR Construction and SitePlus engaged numerous pediatric healthcare systems and design professionals to explore the evolving definition of value. Gathered responses show an opportunity to align evolving value and aspirational statements with potential reactions from pediatric providers. The result is a framework that follows the patient through a five-competency continuum of care, mapped to the pediatric consumer’s explicit and implicit value statements, moving from individual needs to collective impact.

Discussions around the patient’s and family’s needs will drive the future of pediatric care and influence decisions around real estate, design, and construction to support this evolution.

Defining Value

Historically, disruptions to the health system have caused providers to question how they define value. The question is two-fold for pediatric providers:

  • How is value defined differently for pediatric health systems?
  • How has the pandemic changed the definition of value?

Stakeholder interviews, research, and data analysis uncovered changing value statements of pediatric healthcare consumers and how those shifts should manifest in care delivery. The result, The Pediatric Value Alignment Continuum, introduces five competencies to move the pediatric provider from individual needs to collective impact. The Continuum intends to help pediatric health care systems think futuristically yet act realistically.

“As we recalibrate, ongoing relationships with trusted providers and buildings designed as part of a multisensory ecosystem—with journeys, behaviors, and interactions—will shape the future of pediatric care.” Hamilton Espinosa, DPR Construction national healthcare core market leader.

Learn more about the pediatric value alignment continuum in the white paper: Navigating Shifting Terrain in Pediatric Care: A new strategic framework focused on changing definitions of value can enable pediatric providers and their facilities to emerge stronger.

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