Clinical Adjacency Planning
Deciding which departments sit near each other, and why.
Clinical adjacency planning defines the required relationships between a hospital's clinical departments - which must be close, which connected, and which separated. It maps the operational dependencies between departments, such as emergency and imaging, operating suites and critical care, or pathology and outpatient clinics, and translates them into adjacency rules, transfer routes and zoning decisions. The result is the link logic that floor and block plans use to position and stack departments.
What this service covers
- Departmental pair relationships and dependencies
- Required-proximity and must-separate adjacency rules
- Movement and transfer relationships between departments
- Emergency, imaging, critical care and procedural relationships
- Inpatient, outpatient and diagnostic service links
- Support and supply route adjacencies
- Security, sterility and access constraints on adjacency
- Adjacency implications for floor and block planning
- Future change and flexibility considered in adjacency
- Documented adjacency plan
Our process
- Confirm the department list and clinical programme
- Map operational dependencies between departments
- Set proximity and separation rules
- Define transfer and movement relationships
- Apply adjacency logic to floor and block plans
- Document the adjacency plan
Frequently asked questions
What does clinical adjacency planning include?
The required proximity, linkage and separation between departments, the movement relationships between them and the planning implications.
When is it needed?
When department placement is being decided, alongside area planning and before the layout plans are frozen.
What information is required?
The department list, clinical operations, transfer patterns between departments and the planned floor programme.
What are the deliverables?
An adjacency plan with dependency maps, adjacency rules and placement guidance for the floor and block plans.
How is it different from clinical area planning?
Clinical area planning defines which areas exist and what they require; adjacency planning decides where they sit in relation to each other.