Exciting Professional Development
This morning I learned that my group won the job of designing an entirely new hospital in one of the most beautiful spots in the country. I needed this. My decades of hard work and experience will come into play here, creating a really special facility that will serve the public and the industry in exemplary fashion. Like Hank Rearden and Howard Roark...I will create something very good. Then, I'll head to my Gulch... I even got a little teary-eyed when I got the news this morning...
What city is it near and when do you think completion will be?
I was able to spend a good deal of time in hospitals over the past three years -- my best friend, both his folks were in deep care during the last weeks of their respective lives. The modern medical facility appears to treat the patient like an administrative billing unit... every time a Specialist walked into the room, a bulb would wink or a chime go off and that was the indication of another Billable Item. US Health "Care" is so expensive due to keeping folks alive (and billable) during their Last Week of "Life" -- as in, "We need to get this patient transferred from Tucson to Phoenix immediately ... order up the medivac" -- which is a rather substantial billable item... after all, that helicopter needs to be properly expensed.
I was able to see the extraordinary quantity of billable items -- in total - during the final weeks of life for my friend's folks. Good Lord... we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. The bills were, for the most part, covered by the VA or other Government entities. The patient pays very little ... so there is little incentive for cost containment. And, since so much Care is provided, including new knees, hips, intestinal reduction, the patient can farm their maladies out to the Medical Industry.
What I Find interesting is the inherent complexity that we absorb as we increase our ability to build and design things functionally.
I watched ONE video where the explained the positive and negative air flow systems so ORs stay clean but a viral patient doesn't contaminate the entire place. Even simple things like "how floors meet walls".
And I don't know JACK about this topic.
The credit goes to Written Language, then Written Codes.
Finally, learning from our failures.
May your new Hospital stand the test of time and help millions of people!
I wondered who actually did that sort of design work. It seems that on new construction, a great deal could be done with minimum effort to manage airflow and provide more UV sterilization in hallways and common areas, for pathogen control. UV systems could be set to switch off temporarily if anyone were to pass through an area.
I also think it would be useful to set up some rooms (for highly infectious or brittle patients) with glass between the patient/provider section and a separate family section, maybe even with separate hallways, so that patients could be visited and have family nearby, maybe just inches away, but who would be physically in a separate part of the building, with no airflow or contamination between the room sections.
i.e.:
=====================hall for staff
[PR][PR][PR][PR][PR][PR]
[VR][VR][VR][VR][VR][VR]
=====================hall for visitors
where [PR] is Patient Room and
[VR] is the visitor's section if each room.
The patient/staff section and the visitor section would be isolated from each other, with only glass, shades, and an intercom between.
Just something to think about.
I don't know anyone else to suggest this to.
I may also have a three-year John Galt role. It is with a local transit agency. Keeping their world motors running, ya know.
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