THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT'S INFLUENCE ON RESILIENCE OF HEALTHCARE SERVICES: LESSONS LEARNT FROM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges for healthcare services, which have been forced to upscale their capacity to cope with successive surges in demand. The adjustments to match capacity to demand and deal with a new disease have involved creativity and solutions that were not part of the pre-pandemic standardized operating procedures. Those changes are considered manifestations of resilience. This paper focuses on the role played by the built environment of healthcare services during the pandemic, in terms of how it is integral to resilient performance. As such, we investigated the experience of a leading private hospital in Brazil, documenting the main changes related to the built environment and how they influenced resilience. Data collection involved eight interviews with hospital staff. A content analysis allowed the development of a generic functional model of the patient journey and the identification of ten resilience practices. Based on this, six lessons learnt were devised. These lessons are expected to be useful for the design and use of the built environment, supporting the resilience of services.