Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is widely recognized as a safe and effective treatment for autism, Down Syndrome, and other diagnoses. Recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate a 178% increase in school-age children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) from 1 in 150 in 2002 to 1 in 54 in 2016″​. This statistic highlights the growing need for effective treatment environments.

As more families seek out centers to help improve the lives of their children who are neurodivergent, including those with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Down Syndrome, it’s essential that organizations are able to provide a customized and low-stress environment for individuals of all ages.

Thoughtful autism therapy center design can play an important role in helping centers create a positive setting for their patients and employees alike. However, did you know that using custom theming can enhance your organization’s business practices as well? Custom theming can become an all-in-one solution to address your organizational goals, whether it be through increasing patient experiences and building retention, expanding your organization’s marketing campaign, or finding ways to build your donor list.

Let’s get into how applying custom theming can address each of these goals.

Enhance Patient Experiences and Build Retention in Your Autism Therapy Center

ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, can be a difficult struggle for children, making the environment and atmosphere in which they receive treatment incredibly important for their overall experience.

Custom theming has become widely popular as an effective way to create a stimulating atmosphere for ASD patients. By using unique decor and furnishings of specific colors, shapes, textures, and sizes that may be beneficial to ASD individuals, centers can truly create a warm and inviting space focused on their individual needs.

Furthermore, certain activities such as crafting, playing games, and reading books are personalized to their interests while different aromatherapy techniques like scent diffusing can also have calm and revitalizing effects on ASD kids. Themed centers can make the patient experience more enjoyable and effective for ASD kids allowing them to focus on the genuine care being provided by the staff.

By improving patient experience, you are directly showing your kids, and especially, the parents, that you genuinely care about how the child feels when they’re at your facility.

Custom theming can help enhance not only the experience of their time at your facility but also the outcomes through the practical uses provided by it. In turn, the parents will recognize the effort being put in and be less likely to want to transfer their child to a different location. These parents may also become advocates for your organization and create new potential clients to come to your facility.

Expand Your Organization’s Marketing Campaigns Through Custom Theming Strategies

Custom theming can be an effective way to strengthen the marketing campaigns for autism centers, as it adds a personalized touch that resonates with ASD clients and their families. By carefully considering the tone, logo, visuals, and messaging in their campaign designs and content, ASD centers can create cohesive experiential campaigns that — when paired with content tailored to ASD stakeholders — provide an effective, meaningful approach to outreach. Not only does this help ASD centers build relationships with those they serve, but it further shows commitment to everyone involved in the effort.

Custom theming is not only tied to the marketing efforts of the organization but can provide an opportunity for organic marketing growth, specifically when it comes to user-generated content.

User-generated content is made up of photos, videos, or public comments made about your organization that visitors have made online. These can provide organic branches for your marketing campaign to help promote your organization, especially if your facility has built-in photo ops within its space. A fun environment can invite parents to take photos of their child within your space and share it online for others to see and potentially tag you within their posts. This can help grow your organization’s marketing effort and provide eyes to your facility.

Ultimately, custom theming offers autism centers a way to differentiate themselves from competitors; create a unique identity; increase brand recognition; maximize engagement; and drive success for both short-term and long-term marketing goals. This leads to our next point…

Enhance Fundraising and Donor Engagement for Autism Support Centers

If your organization is dependent on the charity of others, this is especially important. Having an increase in funding can allow your organization to improve its resources, provide more opportunities, and most importantly, create an all-in-all better experience for your clients attending your facility.

With custom-theming provides a quality patient experience and pairing that with the marketing potential of having a themed design can provide, it can heavily improve the image that your facility outputs. Having a healthy and attractive image will give potential donors a reason to notice and provide support to your facility. Especially showing the amount of effort being put into the betterment of your clients, donors will recognize your hard work and the outcomes that come out of it.

This attention doesn’t stop at only potential donors but can create a spotlight for potential sponsorships from other organizations to help your facility. These sponsorships can create new branches within your marketing campaigns and feed into the cycle of new eyes, new donors, and new improvements to your facility.

The Impact of Custom Theming on Autism Therapy Centers: A Summary

No matter what size autism center you’re running, the importance of creating a space that considers your individual clientele can have a tremendous amount of positive impact. A comprehensive study found that early intervention programs for very young children with autism, some as young as 18 months, significantly improve IQ, language ability, and social interaction.

Custom theming can provide patients and families with comfort and therapeutic benefits while also furthering your organization’s marketing efforts, and donor list, and building customer retention. Investing in custom theming is an investment in the patient experience and can pay off greatly; just make sure to keep the focus on your key demographics needs when designing your space.

Here at Imagination Design Studios, we understand that custom theming isn’t always easy, so if you’re having a hard time visualizing how this might come together for your autism center or build out work within a budget visit our website to speak to one of our creative consultants today! We are here to help you create an innovative, therapeutic, and welcoming atmosphere for all those utilizing your services.

Dave Nolan, the President of IDS, is a father of two sons, one of whom has autism. While navigating dental and medical appointments, he noticed the heightened stress and anxiety his son experienced when entering unfamiliar environments. This observation led him to wonder, “There must be a way to improve this experience for children in similar situations.” At Imagination Design Studios, our “Why” is driven by our deep belief in the transformative power of positive, welcoming neurodivergent-friendly environments in a child’s development.

Interested in learning more? Check out these related resources on themed environments and their benefits:

5 Ways to Improve Pediatric Patient Experience in Your Medical Clinic

Pediatric Therapy Facility Decor Inspiration

The Healing Power of Fun Decor in Children’s Hospital Environments

Color and Light in Interior Spaces for Children with Autism

Keep Guests on Track with 7 Types of Fun Wayfinding Signage for Pediatric Healthcare Spaces

Design inspiration is about more than creativity. That’s especially true for the future of pediatric medical office design.

Young patients and their families require design considerations that create:

• Confidence in the care environment.
• Playfulness that engages their emotions.
• Hope for positive outcomes.

Those elements function best when they work together in a flexible, high-performance environment. That said, the pediatric patient experience relies on medical care excellence, technology, and interactive patient engagement for comforting care desired by children and families.

What’s Driving the Future of Pediatric Medical Office Design?

Pediatric patients are presenting with increasingly complex care cases. Teams with multidisciplinary care plans are equipped to treat young patients these days.

Those realities are impacting how the pediatric care environment is designed. Spaces are required to adapt for the sake of the pediatric patient care protocols, their families, and the teams who treat them.

It makes sense also that spaces are being designed to accommodate a cross-section of specialists in one location. This keeps the family’s care accessible without emotionally upsetting delays.

Think about it this way:

• Waiting rooms that provide positive distractions.
• Patient flow throughout the facility that reduces stress on parents and children.
  

A cozy waiting area.

A fun way to create wayfinding for children.

Basically, intentional design adapts to the emotional journey that the need for care creates.

WHAT THE FUTURE OF THE PEDIATRIC MEDICAL OFFICE DESIGN LOOKS LIKE

Growing pediatric practices share some common best-practice design benefits. These are somewhat fundamental to how you can intentionally design or re-design your practice.

Positive Patient and Family Engagement Features Throughout the Facility

The idea of distraction is more about creating a relaxing, non-aversive response the moment a child/family arrives. It involves maximizing the availability of age-appropriate experiences and activities.

Keep in mind that some pediatric patients range from very young (toddlers and preschoolers) to elementary-aged children to teenagers. Make sure your design encompasses each age range or demographic or that it provides spaces that would appeal accordingly.

Hands-on bead tables, play boards like KeeBees, and slides are great ways to keep younger patients occupied and entertained.

Form and function design can be tailored to the varying scope of children and families served.

• Interactive, tactile walls, playrooms, and spaces dedicated to young patients and their parent(s)/family members.
• High-tech spaces with age-appropriate technology for teenagers.
• Colors and textures that create a relaxing, at-home feel.
  
  

Family-centric Design That Encourages Partnership in Care

Caregiver identities can vary. Whoever arrives at your facility the core value should be optimum care for the child/children.

Your design can, and should, also support the supportive caregiver role. Space can be created to highlight and practically nurture this vital adult-provider relationship on behalf of pediatric patients.

• Long-term care provisions can include family sleeping pods, kitchenettes, laundry facilities, and more.
• Onsite technology capable zones can assist short- and long-term patient families with remote working, schooling, or other routine functions.

The common denominator of your family-centric design is comfort and familiarity. Your attention to detail can help families and their child/children adapt to the upheaval that a medical appointment or a required stay can produce.

Scaled Design Layout That Is Easily and Comfortably Navigated

Think of this as an emotionally sensitive “traffic-flow” feature. In some ways, it’s more than the traditional, linear layout you might associate with a hotel – a long interior hallway of exam, treatment, or inpatient rooms.

A useful (and better) image is that of a “neighborhood.” Each “block” or “zone” has its own unique identity appropriate to the patient’s age, etc. This idea helps reduce the stress associated with the common, traditional layout.

Jungle and Undersea themed murals installed on different floors of a children’s hospital.

Via Cory Klein Photography – Different colors are used to represent different wards.

Patients, parents, and caregivers feel more at home physically and emotionally. Plus, any built-in theming provides a positive distraction that also inspires trust and a sense of calm.

Enhance Standard of Care Essentials Through Design

Care that’s efficient, safe, and secure is expected. Even so, these essentials must be prioritized throughout the design process.

The healing environment mindset helps guide design strategies that enhance patient safety, security, and care efficiency.

• Waiting rooms, treatment rooms, and follow-up care areas can be designed to reduce provider stress for safer, more predictable care outcomes.
• Filter all design features through a safety-security grid that considers all points of contact, infection-prevention and control, and provider/team workflows.

And speaking of the previously mentioned “healing environment”…

Evaluate Your Design Around the Healing Results Desired for Each Patient Experience

Design should embrace the human element. Keep this related thought in mind:

”Understand the human impact of design. Consider daylighting, noise control and acoustics, air quality, privacy, social support and positive distractions in designing a healing environment.” ^[1]

This insight affirms the idea that the patient space can be compartmentalized by design.

• Keep treatment space separate physically (and emotionally) from inpatient spaces.
• Design with special needs in mind including those with autism and who require low or significantly reduced stimulation.
• Provide connection to nature when possible. Outdoor venues can be included in your design for specific therapies and/or to create a healing, calming, stress-free environment to support care.

Natural views help patients feel calm.

These design prompts are only the beginning of what the future of pediatric medical practice design could include. Let your design plans be shaped by these or use them as seeds to grow your layout.

Create an environment that embraces the future of pediatric medical office design.

Check out these related resources to upgrade or renew your patient experience:

New Children’s Hospital Gets a Little IDS Magic

Case Study – Adding Theming to Increase Profitability and Patient Satisfaction

A Practical Guide to Creating an Exceptional Patient Experience

Create a Memorable Patient Experience Through Dental Office Interior Design and Decor

An outstanding patient experience for children and families begins with a kid-centric mindset and intentionally designed environment.

• Reduce patient/family/caregiver anxiety and enhance their relaxation through age-appropriate design features
• Prime patients/families for their appointments, procedures, follow-up, and potential stays
• Create positive experiences for outpatient and inpatient care
  
  
  

Contact Imagination Design Studios (IDS) to get started transforming your pediatric medical office to embrace the future of design effectiveness.