“…This paper responds to a call for a focus on care pathways when designing and constructing health-care facilities. 10 We review the case for new approaches to planning hospital capacity and describe some experiences with alternative approaches by drawing on insights gained in a recent study of health capital investment in Europe undertaken by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the European Health Property Network. 11,12 The project involved a review of the literature around core themes, including capacity planning and how to translate services into assets, and analysis of a series of case studies from across Europe, including the Coxa hospital in Finland, the Rhön Klinikum Group in Germany, the Orbis and Groningen hospitals in the Netherlands, the Trondheim hospital in Norway, the John Paul II hospital in Poland, the Alzira franchise in Spain, the Karolinska hospital in Sweden, as well as regional planning in Tuscany (Italy) and Northern Ireland.…”