In this series, Healthcare Design asks leading healthcare design professionals, firms, and owners to tell us what’s got their attention and share some ideas on the subject.
Paula Crowley is CEO of Anchor Health Properties (Wilmington, Del.), a healthcare development company. Here, she shares her thoughts on branding, flexible building design, and taking lessons from retail to better understand consumer needs and site selection in healthcare.
1. You’re only as good as your brand
Bringing the artistic façade at Mercy Health's new West Hospital (Cincinnati) to life involved an artistic vision, mock-ups, a dose of technology, and a leap of faith.
As healthcare shifts from treatment of existing illness to more preventive care, the opportunities for the built environment keep expanding. We’ve now got flu vaccine clinics in our grocery stores while former retail spaces in commercial areas are being converted to outpatient facilities.
Completion date: November 2013
Owner: Mercy Health
Total building area: 645,000 sq. ft.
Total construction cost: NA
Cost/sq. ft.: NA
Design architect: AECOM with Mic Johnson, lead designer
Architect of record: Champlin Architecture
Interior design and equipment planning: AECOM
Landscape architect: Close Landscape Architecture with Meisner + Associates/Land Vision
MEP engineer: Heapy Engineering
Low voltage and structured cable: Dynamix Engineers
Structural engineer: THP Ltd.
When Mercy Health (Cincinnati) decided to replace two older hospitals on the west side of Cincinnati with one centrally located facility, the provider also saw an opportunity to support an anticipated evolution of services in years to come.
For starters, the organization sought to expand its network by adding a center of excellence in cardiac care (including an open heart surgery program) and a family birth center, services that weren’t available at its former Mt. Airy and Western Hills hospitals.
Healthcare facilities are paying greater attention to the importance of family members in patient care and upgrading or renovating their family and visitor spaces to be more welcoming, with places to sit as well as grab a bite to eat and stay connected with work and friends.
When Hasbro Children’s Hospital (Providence, R.I.) opened in 1995, the pediatric division of Rhode Island Hospital included family space on its patient floors with a few couches for sitting and watching TV.
In this series, Healthcare Design asks leading healthcare design professionals, firms, and owners to tell us what’s got their attention and share some ideas on the subject.
David Surette is director of healthcare and life sciences at Shawmut Design and Construction (Boston). Here, he shares his thoughts on construction schedules, expanding behavioral health services, and the changing space of healthcare facilities.
1. Communication is critical in construction
When Jenifer LaRose, an RN, CPN, and clinical manager of the sixth floor at Hasbro Children’s Hospital (Providence, R.I.), started her career in nursing 20 years ago, she says families were not embraced as part of a patient’s care team.
And even if hospitals had designated spaces for families spending time in the hospital with their loved ones, they typically held a couch or two and a TV, but nothing that really made them feel welcoming and home-like.
Providers have put a lot of time and effort into fine-tuning the patient experience and creating supportive workplaces for staff—and with good reason. But their sights are now resting on another population that’s coming into healthcare buildings: families and visitors.
One of the reasons is that moms, dads, siblings, spouses, and friends are being recognized as important players on patients’ care teams.
The stage is set for designers and manufacturers to talk about product content and material disclosure like never before.
I recently talked with Brendan Owens, vice president of LEED technical development for the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), about how the LEED rating system is helping to drive that discussion. Here's an excerpt from our discussion:
Can something as simple as a curved doorway or undulating roof line on the exterior of a healthcare facility trigger a fear response in patients?
