TRANSITION IN HEALTH CARE DELIVERY
Shifts in U.S. Healthcare
The U.S. healthcare system has undergone dramatic shifts in recent years. As healthcare has become increasingly privatized, it is treated more as a business than as a social service. This profit-centered emphasis has resulted in a great deal of consolidation within the industry.
A second shift in recent years has been a greater emphasis on outpatient care. More and more medical procedures that once would have been performed in a hospital are now performed either in doctors’ offices or in special facilities that are designed for outpatient care. This shift toward outpatient care can be seen as a result of the greater emphasis on profit in the the healthcare field, but it is also an outgrowth of a parallel emphasis on preventive, patient-centered care that has come to the forefront in recent years.
The UCSF Mt. Zion Outpatient Cancer Center is reflective of many of the changes occurring in the larger healthcare field. The client, U.C.S.F. Stanford Healthcare, was a merged system of two formerly independent hospital networks which consolidated in order to lower costs. This merger was unsuccessful and eventually dissolved around the time this building was completed, but not without having a profound effect on the way this building was built. Two clear stories illustrate the changes in healthcare strategy and their effects on this building's architecture:
BUILDING STORY #1: BUILDING STORY # 2:
HYBRID
BUILDING TYPE OWNER- BUILDER DELIVERY PROCESS
