Your hospital is paying for poor wayfinding.
Every day.
Staff time spent giving directions. Clinical work interrupted. Appointments disrupted by late arrivals. Hospital Wayfinding explains what creates this operational burden and how to reduce it. Written for hospital leaders and teams responsible for operations, patient experience and infrastructure.
AU$2.2 million
Estimated annual clinical staff cost of giving directions at Austin Hospital. A case study from Hospital Wayfinding.
2,300 requests for directions. Every day.
At Austin Hospital, clinical staff were routinely pulled away from their work to help people find their destination. The book examines what changed when wayfinding was treated as an operational system. With approximately 70% of the strategy implemented, the investment was recovered in less than a year.
A practical guide to a better system.
Hospital Wayfinding: From operational cost to strategic asset sets out how to plan, commission and manage a system that supports patients and protects staff capacity. Expose the operational cost. Identify where wrong turns and repeated requests for help consume staff time. Fix the underlying system. Align routes, destination names, signs, digital tools and appointment information. Get procurement right. Define the strategy before commissioning implementation. Keep it working. Give wayfinding clear ownership as services and buildings change.
What’s inside
Introduction
01 Wayfinding Stockholm Syndrome
Why hospitals become accustomed to compensating for poor wayfinding.
02 The anatomy of the tax
Where staff time, operational capacity and patient confidence are lost.
03 Systemic failure
How disconnected decisions create recurring wayfinding problems.
04 The procurement trap
Why the way wayfinding is commissioned shapes its performance.
05 The Decision Loop
What people need to understand before they can move with confidence.
06 Operational governance
Establishing responsibility for the system across the hospital.
07 The two-phase delivery model
Defining the strategy and system before implementing it.
08 Governance and continuity
Keeping wayfinding effective as the hospital changes.
09 What high-performing hospitals understand
The principles that support reliable journeys and operational performance.
From the operational cost of poor wayfinding to the decisions needed to improve it: procurement, system design, delivery and ongoing governance.
Our experience from more than 100 hospital projects informs the book.
Case studies throughout the book:
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Austin Hospital (Australia)
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Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (Australia)
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Royal Adelaide Hospital (Australia)
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AZ Groeninge (Belgium)
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Sunshine Coast University Hospital (Australia)
Put better wayfinding on the agenda.
If you are a hospital executive working in wayfinding, patient experience or hospital operations, you’re welcome to apply for a complimentary printed copy.
About the authors
Michèl Verheem
Founder of Humanics Collective, with more than 30 years of experience developing wayfinding systems in complex environments.
Kim Leenards
Strategy Lead of Humanics Collective, with more than 15 years of experience in user experience and strategic wayfinding.