Redesigning and Repurposing Healthcare Facilities for the New Normal, COVID-19: A Review on New Approaches in Hospital Systems

Without any doubt, the outbreak of novel coronavirus; mostly known as COVID-19 has divided the recent timeline of world into three periods namely, before COVID-19, during COVID-19 and after COVID-19. The devastating impacts that occurred during COVID-19 have already been a wake-up call towards how the existing systems should be strengthened for the period after COVID-19 to mitigate the risk of future pandemics. During the pandemic, functionality of healthcare facilities started to fail in a cascading manner highlighting the need for addressing the systemic nature of risks with novel approaches. Architects, engineers, healthcare professionals, and policymakers have started to plan on how the future healthcare facilities have to be altered for the new normal, COVID-19. This paper delves into the challenges rendered on healthcare facilities during COVID-19, immediate actions taken to mitigate the impacts, and new approaches suggested for the period after COVID-19. The study has drawn on a review of recently published scholarly articles, reports, international and national policy and frameworks, news items, magazine articles, etc. pertaining to the behavior of healthcare facilities during the crisis and future hospital designs. Apart from the challenges and immediate actions in mitigating the negative impacts, this paper has summarized new approaches for future hospital designs under two categories namely, hospital design and built environment, and hospital management and operation. It is evident that pandemic has highlighted the paramount importance of sustainable Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies towards more resilient healthcare facilities in the future. But still, these new approaches have to be further validated through multi-sectoral approaches since the crisis is not still over.