Provides M.H.A. and other students who may be interested in careers in health care management with a basic familiarity regarding some of the concepts and terminology related to health facility planning projects. The course touches on areas that a manager might encounter, including working with designers, the relationship between strategic planning issues and facility planning, basic cost estimating techniques, simplified plan interpretation, and use of architectural and engineering scales. The course have two primary components. One portion is lectures and hands-on demonstrations on plan reading/measurements and an overview of the process of project planning. We anticipate a tour of an active or recently completed project at either Cornell or Cayuga Medical Center as time allows. The other involves live or videoconference presentations from invited practitioners and researchers in the health facilities area.

Outcome 1
Define some basic architectural terminology and differentiate the types of drawings typically used in projects.

Outcome 2
Distinguish between a number of basic architectural plan symbols and assess components that would be difficult/costly to move in projects.

Outcome 3
Perform measurements using architectural and engineering scales to take off dimensions from building plans.

Outcome 4
Calculate very preliminary cost estimates for capital budgeting or other requests.

Outcome 5
Evaluate some general approaches used in actual cases that deal with ethical, financial and other tradeoffs in planning and evaluating new or alternative uses of facilities.

Outcome 6
Explain and write an assessment of some practical facility management/planning policy issues and trends presented by guest practitioners from their various professional perspectives regarding operating and designing health facilities.