http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200804/healthcare

Over the past decade, most public places have gotten noticeably better looking. We’ve gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes the bare minimum. If your establishment can’t come up with an original look, customers expect at least some sleek wood fixtures, nicely upholstered chairs, and faux–Murano glass pendant lights.

Unless, that is, your establishment is a doctor’s office, medical clinic, or hospital. Mounting clinical evidence suggests that better design can improve patients’ health—not to mention their morale. But the one-sixth of the American economy devoted to health care hasn’t kept up with the rest of the economy’s aesthetic imperative, leaving patients to wonder, as a diabetes blogger puts it, “why hospital clinic interiors have to feel so much like a Motel 6 from the ’70s.”

Consider diagnostic imaging departments. MRIs and CT scans can frighten many patients, and research shows that simple elements such as nature photos can ease their stress. Yet the typical scanner room still looks “as if it’s a workshop for cars,” says Malkin, with bare walls and big machines. One of the bleakest rooms at the UCLA Medical Plaza, where I spend my time, is a waiting room in the imaging center. Small and beige, it epitomizes aesthetic neglect, with stained chairs, mismatched tiles, and tattered copies of U.S. News & World Report. The only wall art is a drug-company poster on myocardial perfusion imaging—just the thing to comfort anxious patients.

Cost is of course an issue. Malkin estimates that enhanced design amenities can add about 3 percent to the cost of a large project. The big shortage, though, is not money but attention. When hospital boards and executives talk with architects and designers, it’s rarely about the imaging department.