Organizational Design A health care agency or hospital design is very important as it portrays the beliefs and values of that health care. Designs should be designs that care not only for the physicians, trustees, administrators but also for the patients. Thus seeking architectural advice for the construction of a health care is imperative.

There are several architectural design phases such as Schematic design (SD), design development (DD and construction documents (CD). Designs are important to ensure that original intents are not comprised in terms of internal readiness and processes improvement plans.

The design of my healthcare organization, the Legacy Home Health Care in Texas, is such that all types of processes have been mapped beginning from admitting, discharge, billing, and medication requirements. This simplifies the work thus eliminating inefficiencies and focusing mainly on improving patient care.

In addition, the design is such that all the staff is familiar with design features of the Legacy Home Health Care and is also driven by community and program needs by complying with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (an internationally recognized green building certification system) in efforts to becoming carbon neutral.

Factors that define and shape the health care agency

Robert F.Carr (2010) quotes Winston Churchill (1941) as having said that "We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us." He further notes that the design of a facility carries the message to visitors, patients, vendors, volunteers and even the staff themselves. It communicates clues about the organization and the medical care being provided there. The facility design should convey a message that is welcoming, caring, comfort, and compassion, commitment to well-being and safety, features that are evident in Legacy Home Health Care.

Internal factors

Good design in Legacy Home Health Care setting starts by recognizing the basic functional needs so as to meet the emotional needs of those who use those facilities thus shaping how big or small the organization will be, structure and process. This involves combination of several internal factors such as:

It's an important tool in attracting and retaining the best doctors and nurses and due to increasing competition for both patients and staff, having the best and attractive architectural design will keep the cost down allowing the organization to grow in size, refine the chains of command and delegation of authority as well as improved processes.
Flexibility- Legacy Home Health Care is flexible enough to accommodate the changing needs and absorption of new technologies which driven by globalization. This has made it difficult to have definite forecast of the direction of health care due to evolution of new equipment technologies, new treatment methodologies, changes in diseases thus laying an emphasis on the need to have a flexible facility, to allow special care units and personalized medical units to meet the needs of the patients as well as improving the quality of the health care being provided.

In the light of a flexible facility, Legacy Home Health Care has managed to have the right size to meet the above said needs, have structure that is subject to change and easy to altered to meet the organization goals and objectives and also changing processes accordingly to suit the current situation.

Physical environment- National Institute of Health Report (2001) admitted that physical environment have been associated with improvements in health care working conditions. The report also acknowledged the work of Ulrich (1992) that work space design features can help or hinder the accomplishment of work. These design features may include; color, lighting, art, and music that may affect patients, all this operational characteristics affect work flow designs and the quality of care provided and therefore shaping the structure of the organization and processes in terms of access to a health worker.

Work hours and staffing- work performance is influenced by how work is organized, health care personnel and existence of clearly defined processes. Multitasking in my health care agency is not allowed as this may lead to…