Flooring Needs in Healthcare: Flooring opportunities in an evolving market - Oct 2015

THE HOSPITAL OF TOMORROW
As the healthcare marketplace has changed and the hospital has lost business to urgent care clinics, it has had to redefine its role—and that change has precipitated alterations to the physical presence of the hospital as well. 

“Hospitals used to be big buildings on big lots with no trees,” says Hubbell. “They were very expensive to maintain and took lots of manpower. We used to go there only when we were sick. Now, we go to hospitals to maintain our wellness. They have walking parks and fitness tracks. Some even have mixed retail, Lululemon yoga or Whole Foods-type stores.” 

Today’s new healthcare operations typically occupy smaller footprints but include more facilities. “I like to refer to it as the ‘hub and spoke’ model,” explains Martere, “with the hub (the main hospital or infrastructure) remaining constant or even getting smaller, and the spokes (outpatient facilities, clinics, medical office buildings) expanding. There is a consistent movement across the country to bring medical care closer to the consumer and make it easier and more convenient to receive care.” 

In addition, hospitals are looking for ways to make their existing facilities more efficient. Today, much of the hospital stock is pre-1970 and built upon the old model for treating diseases in which the ailing spent long periods of time in the hospital, away from home and the community. In these settings, areas were established for a particular purpose, and fixtures and medical equipment were often fixed. This model, and therefore these facilities, no longer align with the contemporary approach to healthcare. 

“Today, single patient rooms are now the standard,” explains Hubbell. “This is best for patients, but in addition hospitals can charge more for a single room. Hospitals typically look at expected growth for the next three to five years and consider flooring in these long-term plans. The third floor of a hospital may be cardiac now, but that could change. They are designing spaces to be reconfigured easily. It used to be that when you walked into a hospital room, the bathroom was right there, but plumbing isn’t easy to reconfigure, so the bathrooms in new facilities will now be on the outside wall, near the window. Also, there is no more main hub as a nurses’ station. If all the nurses are congregated there, who is caring for the patient? Now, we have a ‘porch,’ a little ledge outside the patient room or inside by the bed where the caregiver can take notes or examine charts. This brings them bedside for better interaction, and immediate charting increases accuracy.” 

Experts report that current activity is a mix of new construction and renovation. If possible, hospitals will utilize the facilities that they have, though sometimes, due to structural constraints, that is impossible. 

In those situations, hospitals will sometimes grow their offerings via mergers and acquisitions or by repurposing current space. The new hospitals that are being built, according to del Vecchio, are “all concept hospitals, beautiful new buildings that are amazing architecturally.”

Regardless of how they choose to grow, today’s hospitals realize the importance of creating an environment that fosters health and happiness. “Hospitals are fighting for patients and staff. Even the best hospitals struggle to make a 3% profit. Part of attracting great talent and patients is the aesthetics of the building,” says David Daughtrey, director of business development for healthcare markets at J+J Flooring Group. 

Renovation is, of course, a tricky process for 24/7/365 facilities, as hospitals are. The work can’t pose hazard to employees or patients, and it can’t create air or noise pollution; however, to meet today’s quality standards, it must be done—and done with regularity. In fact, although acute care facilities are quite interested in lifecycle cost and seek flooring that offers long-term durability, the truth is that, due to ever-changing aesthetics, ten years is typically the lifespan for flooring in an acute care environment, according to Bistolas. 

The solution to the renovation dilemma lies in building flexible facilities with change in mind, knowing that the healthcare of today will be different tomorrow. 

“Today’s buildings are being designed to be more flexible,” says Carol Priefert, segment marketing manager for healthcare, education and retail at Armstrong. “If you look at a new facility, you see that there are movable walls, curtains that are closing off things that can be easily moved, patient pods. They are designed knowing that technology will continue to improve. In coming years, for example, a mammogram machine won’t likely take up a whole room.”

Appel agrees that more designers today are implementing flexible design solutions, creating a space that could service two unrelated fields, for example surgery rooms that could be used by cardiology and neonatal care without significant alterations.

Bistolas points out that the acute care facilities that are doing well are constantly renovating, and those renovations always include the flooring. “They will do a quick refresh—paint, curtains, furniture and flooring—not changing the footprint but putting lipstick on it. The organizations that are doing well are constantly doing this in stages.” 

CREATING A HEALING ENVIRONMENT 
Can flooring really promote healing? “I started examining evidence based design,” says Hubbell. “And I came to believe that we can make floors become an integrated part of the healing environment: textures that help people ambulate better, reduced noise, fewer slips and falls, memory care guidelines. Our mission at Tarkett is to enable the floor to become a part of the healing environment, one that will keep people safe. Flooring can work in so many ways to enable wellness. For patients with Alzheimer’s, it can be used for wayfinding. It can help encourage and stimulate or limit activity with colors and designs.”

Operating under the belief that flooring can, in fact, improve patient outcomes, it only makes sense that specification of the right floor is serious business. Daughtrey notes with a laugh that 20 years ago the manufacturer rep would meet with the facilities manager in the bowels of a hospital to discuss flooring options. Recently, however, Daughtrey was at a job in Ohio where he met with 50 people in various operations at the hospital—both functional and administrative—in an hour-long meeting to discuss a 30-square-yard investment. 

Mike Gallman, senior vice president of product management at Mohawk, notes that specification is “becoming more of a science based on evidence-based design. A lot of people are looking to biophilia.”

And while some criteria typically rise to the top with regard to the most important considerations in specification, more than one of the experts with whom we spoke simply said that every consideration is equally significant: acoustics, maintenance, slip resistance, durability, initial cost, lifecycle cost, ability to handle roller traffic, infection control and comfort underfoot. 

As the hospital facility has changed, the number of flooring materials used has increased. “The majority of flooring for an acute care environment is hard or resilient,” reports Martere. “Resilient floors are most popular for obvious reasons—infection prevention and control, cleanability, roller mobility. However, there is still a strong demand for soft surface flooring in areas like administration, public space, retail and, of course, medical office buildings. Many of our clients are choosing appropriate soft surface flooring solutions for non-clinical spaces—such as waiting rooms, patient corridors and nursing stations—to help them create safer, quieter and more comfortable environments for the patients and staff.” 

For the most part, however, the experts with whom we spoke report that soft surface flooring is fairly uncommon in acute care environments, estimating that hard surface now accounts for an estimated 70% to 90% of the flooring due to concerns about infection control, longevity, durability and ease of maintenance. 

Maintenance requirements play an important role in acute care environments, where dictated procedures and standards become simply best intentions, and the entirety of the process often comes down to an hourly worker with a dirty mop. For this reason, a floor must perform to its best ability with limited care. 

According to Hubbell, secondary infections contracted in healthcare environments kill 100,000 Americans each year. With infections from Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile (C. diff.) on the rise, the trend toward hard surface flooring has increased, not because soft surface flooring can’t stand up to the healthcare environment on a daily basis but because it can’t withstand the harsh chemicals required to kill off dangerous pathogens. 

In addition, del Vecchio points out that acute environments prefer a surface that has very little contrast, so that workers can easily spot stains or small medical implements that may have fallen on the floor—which is another reason that soft surface flooring is less desirable. 

“Thirty years ago,” says Priefert, “we would see the same flooring through the whole hospital. Now, a mixture of products is used because the traffic from area to area varies. We have a variety of products that sell equally well into healthcare: homogeneous in the operating rooms, outpatient surgery centers and ER; LVT, laminate or real wood in the gift shop, c-suite offices and chapels; LVT in the corridors, waiting rooms, lobby, and sometimes in the patient rooms and nurses stations; plus, linoleum, sheet vinyl and VCT are still there are well.”

In specification of acute care flooring, Tandus Centiva uses what it calls a “true fit-for-purpose” approach, relying heavily on the principles of evidence-based design to guide clients to the best flooring solution and experience. 

One thing is clear, however—the reduction of medical errors is a high priority. “The minute you step into a medical facility, you become a liability,” says Hubbell. “Medical error is the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S.” 

And, in fact, interiors can assist in the minimization of errors in unexpected ways. A good acoustic environment, for example, helps ensure that a nurse correctly hears a doctor who verbally communicates a medication type and dosage for a patient. In addition, stress increases both poor health outcomes and medical errors, so the reduction of stress through the creation of an aesthetically pleasing environment is likely to increase health and reduce mistakes. 

As for sustainability, several manufacturers reported that some large organizations, such as Sutter Health, the Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser Permanente, see green as a driving criteria with regard to flooring selection. But for the most part, though green may be part of early conversations, it often falls low on the priority list in favor of more pressing concerns like safety and cost.