Spatial distribution of patient traffic volume in outpatient buildings of large general hospitals in China

Abstract

The spatial distribution of patient traffic is important for hospital building design, but there is still insufficient targeted discussion for Chinese outpatient buildings. To obtain reliable evidence, this study examined the outpatient traffic spatial distribution in a large Chinese general hospital by describing it as a set of inter-department patient traffic frequencies (q), which means the ratio of the number of patient trips within a pair of department units to the hospital’s total outpatient visits. Through three hospital samples and 2443 patient samples, three main findings were obtained: (1) The “q” value sets of each hospital sample and their average value set were obtained, and the idea of using them as evidence in outpatient building design was presented; (2) Outpatient traffic distribution was similar among hospitals and was characterized by clustering among certain departments: 38 out of 150 traffic sections created 90% of outpatient traffic, and four public departments’ outpatient traffic presented directivity; (3) There was an indicated slight variation among the samples; therefore, more precise evidence for specific cases required “q” values generated by themselves, which could be obtained conveniently through methods presented in this study. Subsequently, both evidence and methods are provided.

Keywords

• outpatient building
• patient traffic volume
• spatial distribution
• inter-department traffic frequency
• evidence for architectural design