Accessing Health Care Through Community

Announcement | May 12, 2021

By understanding and honouring the idea of complimentary needs, healthcare has the opportunity to create the Wellness Community.

LIFE COACHING RATHER THAN ‘REACTIVE’ CARE

More and more healthcare providers are trying to find the best solution to a patient’s health needs. They are utilising a more proactive approach through partnering – Life Coaching – rather than through a reactive authoritative approach.

Knowledge being ubiquitous, means more can be known about the individual and thus can be tracked over time informing the future course of action leading to Wellness.

Reliance upon digital forms of communication can give the false sense that the individual is just another ‘bit’ of information. Ironically, Life Coaching in a digital environment can provide a more personal individualized approach since more can be known about a patient rendering any consultation more relevant and personal.

Nurses and physicians can be better informed and thus directly address patients by name, as they will have been introduced to the patient digitally beforehand.

This approach to Wellness applies at any point – being born, life as a child, a young adult, or an adult with children of their own, or in older age.

The lifestyle decisions taken during this journey to Wellness will be counselled by the healthcare team which will include dietary (food market), physical (trainer), etc. Healthcare will connect with the community and the primary care providers will promote a proactive approach by educating the patients and helping them make better lifestyle choices.

These choices will mitigate the avoidable interventions that place an excessive burden upon the healthcare systems globally. By embracing Life Coaching this burden can be eased and in turn healthcare facilities can be re-focused to address the specific function they are designed to fulfill.

Acute Care Facilities can concentrate on assessment, stabilization, and treatment, before returning patients to places better suited to healing: The Community.

Likewise, Chronic Care Facilities can better fulfill the re-balancing through healing and rehabilitation and can be woven intimately into the fabric of the community it serves. The key enabler will be Life Coaching, which re-positions Primary Care to where it functions best: within the relationships.

BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS TO HEALTHCARE

The key to breaking-down the physical and psychological barriers to healthcare today, is to ensure it responds to the needs of its community.

It is essential to create easy and open access to care, be that an annual checkup, an outpatient procedure, rehabilitation services, or a friendly assessment of lifestyle and daily activity goals.

Acute episodes will of course continue to occur and need to be immediately addressed in appropriately designed facilities. However, not all healthcare facilities need to be acute care centres; nor do all need to be attached to acute care centres.

In fact, the placement of these can optimise how each one functions within the social, cultural and physical context in which they are placed. For example, it would be both reasonable and convenient to have birthing centres, elective treatment, and mental health counseling and other such non-acute or chronic care facilities seamlessly integrated into the community.

WEAVING WELLNESS INTO THE FABRIC OF THE COMMUNITY

When healthcare is convenient and proximal to daily activities there will be an improvement in the overall health of a community. Healthcare outlets mixed with shopping, dining, entertainment, education, social gathering, and even, transit nodes, is a successful way in which open access to healthcare can be facilitated and the value of wellness brought to the core of a community.

The genesis of true community life is found in the places where people gather, interact, and lead their daily lives. These places exude life and identity. Some are vital and active, some more calming and sustaining yet all are part of a harmonious whole. Healthcare should no longer stand apart, instead it should quietly permeate the urban fabric of the community and fully commit itself to the Wellbeing of all within it.

Beau Herr CRTKL

Beau Herr, RIBA
Principal

Beau is a principal with the CRTKL Healthcare Practice Group. He has a proven track record of successfully implementing facility planning and design with a diverse exposure to a variety of project types. He has been involved in project development throughout the world, including the development of the financial package and the design of medical facilities, and has experience in all phases of the design process