Here's the good news: With careful planning, it's still possible to design an affordable hospital that stays ahead of industry expectations. But it's also true that some societal trends are putting new pressure on the veterinary industry. And these trends translate into new facility needs.

For example, you may want to consider these issues:

• Whole-life care. Today's pet owners consider their pets to be companions and participants in their everyday lives. Future veterinary hospitals will offer "cradle-to-grave" services such as adoption, wellness care, behaviour training and counselling, daycare, nutritional counselling, rehabilitation therapy, geriatric care, euthanasia, and grief counselling.
• Technology that meets client expectations. Wiring your building for maximum efficiency means anticipating the ways equipment in different parts of your building could work together. For instance, you may want your radiography and lab equipment to drop data directly into electronic medical files.
• Consumer differentiation. As consumers look for products and services that speak to their specific needs and values, practices will diversify to meet these needs. So, it'll be increasingly important to form a practice philosophy that differentiates you from your competition. And your specialized approach to care may change your facility requirements.

For example, let's say you decided to develop a strong reputation in the fast-growing areas of therapy and rehabilitation. You might build rooms that help you address these needs.

• Emphasis on diagnostics. The next generation of practices will increasingly emphasize diagnostics over treatment. As diagnostic imaging becomes more sophisticated, more teams will choose to include diagnostic centres. And when you build, you should try to include the wiring and space you'll need to adopt new and improved diagnostic equipment in the future.
• Specialty, referral, and emergency. We're seeing a strong emerging trend toward centralized services and facilities with the proliferation of specialty, referral, and emergency practices. As this trend picks up speed, more practitioners are shying away from providing all available medical services to their clients. Instead, they're combining resources to provide some specialty services.
• Boarding and daycare. Modern pet owners stay on the move. And while many take their pets on vacation, others choose to leave pets at boarding resorts. We're also seeing increased consumer demand for pet daycare.

To appeal to these mobile pet owners, you may want to offer spa and resort services for pets. Apartment-like animal housing, up-scale grooming, and landscaped outdoor recreation areas all appeal to this crowd. Some hospitals also choose to include high-end retail to give clients the convenience of one-stop pet supply shopping.

Balancing the tug-of-war between your wallet and your dreams can be as simple as coming up with strategic design solutions. The following strategies seek to reduce circulation, incorporate multi-use spaces, and increase efficiency.

• The pod concept. Many human medical facilities group sets of three or four exam rooms to make a pod, and it works for veterinary practices that focus on outpatient care, too. The pod configuration lets a doctor and technician team work several exam rooms simultaneously. And these one-door exam rooms significantly save on square-footage because you don't need an access hall on both sides of the room.
• Multi-task exam room. In many veterinary hospitals, exam rooms aren't used at full capacity during the middle hours of the day. If you install a folding wall in the back of the room, you can use the space as an exam room in the morning and evening rush hours and as additional treatment space during the day.
• Open exam room. Some veterinary hospitals add exam space and advertise their high-quality care by creating a place to perform exams in an open area off the waiting room.
• Ready room. The ready room's a mini-treatment room adjacent to the exam rooms. This space works well with the pod concept and high-density scheduling. A technician can do minor procedures in the ready room, which lets the doctor move on to the next exam room. At the same time, a team member can escort the client back to the waiting room, freeing the exam room for another patient.
• Resource room. Ideally, you'd make this multi-purpose room accessible to the waiting and treatment areas, and doctors' offices. Furnished with a conference table, shelves, and desks around the perimeter, you can use this room as a library, gathering space for meetings and continuing education, or an additional workspace.
• Express check in/checkout. You've dropped your bags curbside or with the hotel concierge, right? Well, it's the same idea. Your team would meet clients at the curb and start their visit quickly and efficiently. You'd check clients out in a more private setting, such as an exam room, rather than the reception desk. This could be a great way to provide a higher level of service without increasing square footage.
• The greeter's station. A greeter's station replaces the traditional reception desk and lets one team member focus on addressing clients' immediate needs without needing to answer the phone or attend to other business.

Advances in technology make this change possible. As wireless computer networks become more prevalent, you can conduct business transactions anywhere in the practice. Checkout can occur in exam rooms. Your team can schedule appointments from anywhere. You can enter data in records anywhere anytime. All this means you no longer need to chain basic business functions to your reception desk.