By Dan Hounsell

Few institutional and commercial organizations make changes to their facilities as often as healthcare systems. Organizations regularly update, retrofit and expand existing facilities and build new ones, all to improve performance and provide better services to patients. Now even the most complex area of any hospital -- operating rooms -- are coming under greater scrutiny.

 increasing recognition that hospitals are human centered, said Anjali Joseph, director of the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing at Clemson University.

Their goal: to rethink the layout as well as plan for the future. The problem of squeezing people and a variety of machines — not to mention robots — into surgical suites designed decades ago is forcing a change, according to The New York Times.

From increasing in size to reorienting the layout, hospitals are bringing together surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses with architects, engineers and administrative staff to rethink the modern operating room. But even older community hospitals, with more limited budgets, are getting creative, since surgeries are an all-important source of revenue.