Skytron Blog

You don’t get many chances to get a rebuild or renovation right.

For most facilities, capital approval comes once, maybe twice, in a decade if they’re lucky. When it finally happens, the expectations are high, the timelines are tight, and the margin for error is almost nonexistent.

Because whatever gets built isn’t just what teams work with next year. It’s what they’ll live with for the next ten to twenty.

When approval finally comes, pressure is already baked in

Renovation and rebuild decisions rarely happen in a calm moment. They usually arrive after years of deferred upgrades, operational strain, and growing misalignment between space and reality.

Industry reporting continues to show procedural volume shifting out of traditional inpatient hospitals and into ambulatory surgery centers and smaller format facilities. Becker’s Hospital Review notes that more than 60 percent of surgeries are now performed in outpatient settings, a trend that continues to accelerate as payers and health systems push care to lower cost sites.¹

At the same time, procedure complexity has not slowed. Healthcare Design Magazine has reported that procedures once reserved for inpatient settings are increasingly being performed in outpatient environments, placing new demands on operating rooms and sterile processing departments that were not originally designed for that level of acuity.²

Layer that growth on top of persistent staffing shortages across perioperative services and sterile processing, and it becomes clear why these decisions feel heavy. Leaders are not planning for ideal conditions. They are planning for sustained pressure.

Renovation decisions lock in more than space and equipment

Capital planning conversations often start with square footage, budgets, and equipment lists. But what gets finalized during those months of planning quietly locks in far more than that.

Layouts determine how teams move and interact. Infrastructure determines whether rooms can adapt as service lines change. Utility capacity determines whether new technology can be added without reopening ceilings or walls.

AORN has consistently emphasized that physical design directly affects workflow efficiency, safety, and staff fatigue, particularly in sterile processing, where space constraints and poor adjacencies can create downstream bottlenecks that are difficult to correct once a department is operational.³

Once a space is placed into service, those decisions are largely fixed. Workarounds emerge not because teams are careless, but because the environment no longer matches the work being asked of it.
 

The margin for error is smaller than it used to be

What makes these decisions feel more consequential today is not that leaders are unaware of the risks. It is that the buffer for absorbing mistakes has shrunk.

Healthcare Purchasing News has reported that many facilities are operating with limited redundancy in both equipment and staffing, increasing the operational impact of downtime, workflow disruptions, and inefficient layouts.⁴ When a system or space underperforms, the effect is felt immediately and often across multiple departments.

In smaller facilities, particularly ASCs, there may be no alternative room, no overflow capacity, and no easy way to recover lost time. In hospitals, even with 24-hour operations, inefficiencies compound as delays stack and teams are forced to work around fixed constraints.

Once construction is complete, the cost of change becomes exponentially higher.

This is not about perfect planning

No renovation or rebuild eliminates uncertainty. Volumes will continue to shift. Technology will evolve. Staffing challenges will persist.

What leaders are trying to avoid is preventable friction.

Healthcare Design Magazine has noted that flexibility, standardization, and infrastructure that anticipates change are increasingly critical as facilities attempt to future-proof spaces that will remain in service for decades.² That does not mean designing for every possible scenario. It means avoiding decisions that limit adaptation later.

Good planning cannot remove pressure from healthcare operations. But poor planning multiplies it.
 

Where partnership actually matters

At this stage, the role of a design and technology partner is not to promise perfection. It is to respect the weight of the decision.

That means designing for longevity when replacement cycles are long. Building flexibility into systems that will need to adapt over time. And helping teams avoid solutions that look efficient on paper but quietly strain operations years after construction wraps.

These choices are not about trends or features. They are about the lived experience of the teams who will work in these environments long after the planning meetings end.
 

Getting it right means understanding what lasts

When perioperative and sterile processing leaders finally get approval to renovate or rebuild, they are not just choosing layouts or equipment. They are locking in workflows, capacity, and constraints that their teams will navigate for years.

Recognizing that reality is not pessimism. It is respect.

And when you only get one shot, decisions stop being theoretical. They directly shape a facility’s ability to deliver safe, reliable patient care for years to come.

Because these renovation and rebuild opportunities are so rare, many facilities rely on experienced partners not only during construction but also during the planning phase.

Skytron supports OR and sterile processing projects through dedicated design and planning services, working alongside clinical, facilities, and project teams to help translate operational needs into spaces that will hold up long after the project is complete. The goal is not to promise perfection, but to help leaders avoid preventable friction when the cost of change is high and the timeline for replacement is long.
 

 
References
1. Becker’s Hospital Review. “Outpatient surgery continues to accelerate across the U.S.”
2. Healthcare Design Magazine. “Designing operating rooms for flexibility and future change”
3. Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN). “Sterile processing department design considerations”