Touch Points & Time Between

The CAMA Design Lab works with healthcare systems to redefine the patient and family experience through the design of the built environment.  CAMA’s unique approach focuses on two components that we believe to be fundamental to all healthcare experiences: Touch Points & the Time Between.  Touch Points refer to those moments when caregivers or other hospital staff engage directly with patients and/or family.  CAMA explores how specific design features can enhance these human interactions to improve communication, increase understanding, and reduce anxiety.  Time Between refers to the time patients and family spend on their own between these direct Touch Points.  Drawing inspiration from other industries, CAMA explores how to empower patients and family when they have free time and how to create desirable destinations and amenities that improve the experience, addressing their emotional, physical, and social needs.

CAMA can help organizations to design for Touch Points and the Time Between through our engagement with the needs faced by you, your staff, and your patients. Often, this work will involve facilitating visioning workshops with patients, family, and staff in order to reimagine the collection of experiences across the continuum of care that influence an overall impression of care. We consider the entire patient journey, from arriving on campus, entering through multiple front doors, seeking out information, navigating the building, preparing for an appointment or procedure, how patients, staff, and families are occupying time in between procedures or appointments, recovering within the patient room, undergoing the discharge process and understanding next steps, and finally returning home.

CAMA captures creative design ideas in a variety of formats to help promote innovation and influence facility and program improvements.  For example, at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital, CAMA developed several tools to aid the design team as they shaped the new Marcus Heart Tower, including a set of experiential room data sheets and maps.  The data sheets provided design recommendations and checklists at key locations, while the maps helped the client visually understand the relative scale and proximity of these key spaces that, when taken together, most contribute to the overall care experience.  Currently, CAMA is working on the creation of a Patient Field Guide to introduce the Marcus Heart and Vascular Center to patients and family and highlight its many desirable design features as well as situate the building within Piedmont Atlanta Hospital’s health campus and the surrounding community.