ABSTRACT
The field of health care architecture is replete with information about evidence-based design, best practice design strategies, and lessons learned from the field for various environments. Most evaluation projects to date on health care facilities have utilized different processes, metrics, and sets of tools, hampering the transferability of findings and compromising the development of a standardized facility database that spans multiple facilities or departments. This chapter discusses the development and pilot testing of a new structured post-occupancy evaluation (POE) approach to conduct quality assessments of medical facilities for the military health system (MHS) in their quest to build and operate world-class medical facilities. The MHS desires to build an assessment program to inform the development of evidence-based planning and design guidelines for health care projects. In particular a POE approach, framework, methodology, metrics, and data collection tools are briefly presented, offering insight on how to conduct facility-wide assessments and focused assessments within inpatient and outpatient clinical departments.
