Planning, designing and building a modern hospital requires input from administrators, architects, consultants, interior designers, construction professionals, facilities managers, safety supervisors, infection preventionists and more. The various viewpoints that each professional brings to the table helps to elevate the project to reach performance excellence.

These converging viewpoints also help to make the International Summit & Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction (PDC) the best conference in the field. The PDC Summit brings together a wide variety of professionals, giving them a chance to learn from each other, make valuable connections and shape the future of the health care physical environment.

While the integration of attendees is what makes the PDC Summit so special, the event also provides individual benefits. Hospital administrators, for example, will find strategic insights into changes on the horizon and how they will affect the physical environment. Architects benefit from sessions on new design regulations, evidence-based design and architectural innovations. In addition to conference sessions, construction professionals also can register for the Certified Healthcare Constructor (CHC) exam review course and can apply to take the CHC exam on-site following the PDC Summit. And health facilities managers can learn how to create operational strategies that complement building initiatives.

The next PDC Summit will be March 16–19 in Orlando, Fla. The keynote speaker is New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Pink, who takes a scientific approach to determining what motivates people and how these motivators can improve performance. Pink will tell how organizations are rethinking innovation and how their approaches apply to health care projects.

Educational programming during the conference focuses on finding ways to provide value to the built environment over time as well as ways to serve a multigenerational population with different needs, abilities and work-style preferences. The progamming focus on Monday will be strategy; on Tuesday, building and construction; and on Wednesday, performance excellence.

Programming tracks include fundamentals of PDC, innovation, leadership, performance metrics, regulatory issues and the American College of Healthcare Architects Master Series. There is also a track focused on changes in the 2014 edition of the Facility Guidelines Institute's Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals and Outpatient Facilities. The 2014 edition of the Guidelines will be available in January but attendees can receive a 10 percent discount if they buy a hard copy at the PDC Summit.

The 2014 PDC Summit registration is now open and early-bird rates are available until Feb. 3. The cost to attend the PDC Summit is 23 percent less than that of competing conferences. Hotel and exhibitor rates also are less. What's more, the PDC Summit is coordinated by a network of nonprofit organizations with 100 percent of conference revenue reinvested into the mission of optimizing the health care environment.

For more information on the PDC Summit, go to www.pdcsummit.org.

By Deanna Martin, senior communications specialist for ASHE.

ASHE insight

Important monographs available

ASHE makes important resources available to members. Following are two recently released monographs that can be accessed by ASHE members as free PDFs at www.ashe.org/resources/management_monographs.

• Life Safety Code Comparison. The 2012 edition of the National Fire Protection Association's Life Safety Code offers new design and compliance options for health care facilities that didn't exist in previous editions. This ASHE monograph provides an exhaustive list of the changes in the new edition and a detailed comparison with the 2000 and 2009 editions.

• Room Ventilation and Airborne Disease. This ASHE monograph examines research on how room ventilation affects airborne-disease transmission in health care facilities. Farhad Memarzadeh, Ph.D., P.E., examines findings that consider the effects of air changes per hour on infection transmission.

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