Practice Management Failing to Plan—or Planning To Fail? Designing a Clinic for Success Urgent message: Making the best use of the space you have is not just a matter of comfort and esthetics; an efficient floor plan con- tributes to providing proper—and cost-effective—care and services. Patrice Pash, RN, BSN, COHC o you’ve signed the lease or purchased the property and you’re sitting there staring at this huge empty shell, dreaming of the potential finished space. What will it look like? How many exam rooms do you need? What additional offices might be necessary as the business grows? It might seem like the simple answer is to hand off all these questions to your architect, but consid- ering that many out there today have never been in- volved in designing or © Images.com/Corbis planning for a true urgent care center, you may find that your architect has as many questions as you do. Working together, you can certainly come up with a viable plan, but first you need to know what you need to be functional—now and into the future. What happens when you find that four exam rooms are simply not enough during flu season? Perhaps you’ve taken on a corporate client that sends you potential em- ployees for drug testing and you realize that your one and only restroom is woefully inadequate. Failing to plan properly now may come back to haunt you later on. S 34 Exam Rooms One of the most common questions when planning is, how many exam rooms will I need? Logic might dictate that if you have a large enough shell to go ahead and build as many exam rooms as will comfortably fit. However, on average, a single practitioner can effec- tively cover five or six exam rooms, with an additional one or two larger procedure rooms. Having more only allows you to stack up patients in the rooms during high-volume times; it does not alleviate patient flow JUCM T h e J o u r n a l o f U r g e n t C a r e M e d i c i n e | D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 8 w w w. j u c m . c o m