The development and construction of your medical clinic involve three distinct phases. As you go through each phase, you’ll take multiple steps to ensure that the clinic is designed, developed, and constructed according to your needs.
Today’s blog provides an overview of what you should expect during your medical clinic’s development and construction phase and how a turnkey solutions company can help you bring your clinic to life.
Keep reading to learn more!
Phase 1: Planning and Design
Phase 1 involves your defining your project and planning out its execution. Take some time to consider the following:
- What is your clinic’s mission?
- What patient population will it serve?
- How many patients will you serve at one time?
- What technologies will you use?
Consider where you want your clinic to start and where it will be in five years. You don’t want to stifle your clinic’s growth by not considering the future.
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can work with an architect to draw out your clinic’s design within your budgetary restrictions. A turnkey solutions company can provide you with a skilled architect.
Phase 2: Development
The development phase of your medical clinic takes Phase 1 to the next level. Developing your clinic involves going through a permit process, design development, and construction documents. Let’s look at each step in more detail:
- Design Development – The design development process involves taking your blueprint and breaking it down room by room to ensure that no detail is left untouched.
For each treatment room, you should pay attention to medical equipment, HVAC loads, plumbing and electricity, floor plans, wall elevations, materials, and finishes.
Consider what you need in every space, whether it’s a treatment room, office, break room, equipment room, or waiting room. - Construction Documents – The construction documents should provide all the necessary information that the general contractor (GC) needs to successfully build the medical clinic to align with your design development results.
While you can communicate with the architect/engineer team, the construction documents should be thorough enough to keep this communication to a minimum.
- Permit Process – Before bringing your design to life, you’ll need permission to build your clinic on a piece of land. There’s the real estate process where you secure your land, and then there’s the permit process where you get permission to use your land. This is a critical step to moving forward with your plans.
You’ll need to get a permit from the City or County and a permit from the agency in charge of healthcare in your state. Your City or County permit will grant you permission to build a clinic on land not already zoned for medical clinic use.
Your state healthcare agency permit comes after the City or County one. Until your first permit has been granted, your state healthcare agency can’t approve a permit for you. This second permit affirms structural integrity and performance requirements that your engineer must meet.
The permit process frequently involves back-and-forth communication and can take months to get through. Your architect or engineer is responsible for implementing any changes that need to be made.
Phase 3: Building
Phase 3 of the development and construction of your medical clinic focuses on the construction side of things. Before, you were laying out what you wanted for your clinic, designing it, and getting permission to build it.
Now that you’ve crossed those items off your checklist, it’s time for bidding, licensing, and your evaluation. Let’s take a look:
- Bidding/Construction – This is where you choose your GC. You want to get bids on your project from at least three contractors to ensure you’re getting a fair price that’s market value. A turnkey solutions company can guide you through this process.
- Licensing/Occupancy – After construction is finished, you’ll want to contact your state healthcare agency to ask for approval. Their stamp of approval means you can begin installing equipment and allowing employees in to begin preparations for future patients.
Additionally, you’ll want to pass the licensing section provided by the Department of Health Services to ensure that your clinic meets fire safety guidelines. You might also seek approval for Medicare certification.
Once these steps are taken, you can open your medical clinic’s doors to patients who need medical care! - Evaluation – Even after your medical clinic has been built and your doors open, it’s a good idea to continue evaluating your clinic to see how it’s serving your patients’ needs and how you can improve everyone’s experience.
Talk with your staff – everyone who regularly occupies the building – and see what their experience has been like. Discuss how operations are going, whether the building’s temperature is well-regulated, and whether anything needs to be fixed or requires closer attention.
As you can see, each of the three phases involves lots of work that you shouldn’t have to tackle alone! Bringing a turnkey solutions company onto your team can be a game-changer that prevents hiccups and pushes the project forward faster.
What is a turnkey solutions company? It’s a company that provides you with everything you need – your architect and design, your general contractor, the construction crew, and more. A turnkey solutions company can even obtain your permits and certifications on your behalf.
And you can still play an active role in developing and constructing your medical clinic through weekly conference calls, status reports, task items, document collection, and detailed close-out packets.
SCG West Is Your Turnkey Solution.
SCG West is the turnkey solutions company you want on your team with milestones and phases that lead to project completion. We can join your team at any point during your project, and instead of being locked into a contract you can’t get out of, you can opt out of our services after any milestone or phase.
SCG West is here to help your project go from conception to completion. Contact us today if you have questions, want more information, or want to work with us. We’re excited to hear from you!
