Evaluating building performance in healthcare facilities using entropy and graph heuristic theories

Abstract

Designing a healthcare facility is one of the most challenging tasks due to the complexity associated with these facilities. The primary goal of healthcare facilities is to provide high-quality care; consequently, the design of healthcare facilities and their environments directly affects the facility's productivity, the organization's economic performance, the experienced clinical outcomes in the hospital, as well as patient and staff satisfaction. The redesign of a healthcare facility is essential for ensuring a serene healing environment for the patients and thus influences their healing rates, reduces the amount of time spent in the facilities, and impacts their level of satisfaction with the care provided. The evaluation methodology is a step in the redesign process that measures the performance of healthcare buildings according to international standards. In this study, the collected standards were weighted using an entropy algorithm to evaluate different departments in various hospitals. In addition, the layout score was measured using the adjacent algorithm as one of the graph heuristic methods to determine whether the department or the whole hospital can be redesigned to meet international standards. According to the results of our methodologies being used in one selected hospital in Egypt, the average of the satisfied standards was 43%, standards that could be satisfied were 24%, not applicable standards were 34%, and the average layout score was 25.