Facility and Capacity Planning

Facility planning may feel like a daunting and costly endeavor. From reconfiguring the wing of a hospital, to replacing an entire facility, it seems to become more expensive with every late change order. The Camden Group's team is uniquely qualified to assist you in the planning process and help you avoid common pitfalls and setbacks. Our clinicians, thought leaders, and planners have over 35 years of facility planning experience and are former provider-side executives and leaders who bring the depth of their experience to partner with healthcare providers and architects in all aspects of the pre-design phase of the construction process. We support our clients in evaluating their current state, the impact of healthcare industry trends, strategic direction, and developing a framework for systematically realizing their future state.

The Camden Group is distinguished from other facility planning consultants by our comprehensive scope of pre-design services:

• Strategic and Business Line Planning
• Operations Analysis
• Facility and Capacity Sizing
• Financial Planning with the use of Camden's DecisionPoint modeling software

We support healthcare providers and their architectural partners in developing facility solutions that are forward thinking, yet practical, cost-effective, and evidence-based.

Fundamental to our process is identifying the historical and potential future financial contribution to the organization made by each service line, business unit, and key initiative. This information is combined with a thorough assessment of debt capacity and access to capital and then used to prioritize resource allocation and project the impact of the strategies on the future financial performance. We utilize Camden's DecisionPoint, our proprietary financial model, to support the analysis.

A Comprehensive Role

The Camden Group's role in facility planning includes the following five key processes in the pre-design phase:

• Current State Assessment
• Market Assessment and Utilization Projections
• Facility Sizing
• Functional and Space Programming
• Financial Feasibility

Current State Assessment

Our current state assessment includes a review and observation of the scope of services, workflow processes, organizational structure, workload volume, staffing, interdepartmental relationships, and physical space to gain an understanding of the current care or service delivery model.

With our assessment, our clients benefit from opportunities for service/delivery process improvement that can be immediately implemented. This can result in enhanced capacity, improved productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and help meet industry or service specific productivity and utilization targets.

Market Assessment and Utilization Projections

The Camden Group reviews population and market-based data with consideration of the impact of external driving forces. These forces include health status indicators, demographic trends, clinical technology or care delivery changes, reimbursement, and regulation on healthcare utilization.

Our detailed market assessment and utilization projections allow us to evaluate the potential to meet access, utilization/capacity, and patient care efficiency and outcome objectives via operational enhancement to existing facilities.

Facility Sizing

With Camden's DecisionPoint, our proprietary utilization and projection model, our experts use projected healthcare utilization volumes and throughput assumptions to determine the number of key rooms that will serve as the basis for facility sizing over time. We use industry benchmarks, regulatory requirements, and evolving technology specifications to determine space per key room. We develop immediate, short-term, and long-term space requirements to guide the Master Facility Plan and conceptual design.

Functional and Space Programming

In this stage of planning, our experts define the functional and space program requirements for operating units based on the service delivery model, optimal work flow, and the key relationships that exist between room elements. The completed functional and space program document serves as the reference document (or output specifications) describing the functional programs, operating models, space and adjacency requirements, and conceptual design elements to be used by architects in developing schematic designs. We review and confirm the strategic, operational, and business planning information and provide the functional narrative for each department, such as describing the scope of services provided, operating model, key operating statistics, etc. We also identify the room-by-room space program to be used by the architect in creating the schematic design, based on industry benchmarks, regulatory space requirements, and evolving technology specifications.

Financial Feasibility

Financial projections and sensitivity analysis should be incorporated in every Master Facility Plan to assess the financial feasibility of the plan and the long-term viability of the organization. The Camden Group is on HUD's approved bidders list, and our team is experienced in providing feasibility studies and other financial advisory services. Our proprietary tool, Camden's DecisionPoint, supports our analysis.

Ultimately, our comprehensive approach links the strategic and facility plans to evaluate potential options and create priorities, determine strategic and financial viability given capital capacity, and model potential market conditions to guide organizational risk tolerance and capital investment.

For more information on how we can assist you with your facility and capacity planning needs, please contact us.