Anne DiNardo

Growing up in a family immersed in healthcare, Thomas Goetz says he made the conscious decision to follow a different path, becoming a journalist and serving as executive editor of Wired magazine for several years before his current stint as entrepreneur in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

A few decades ago, he says he began to see how technology could help improve healthcare. “In the past, technology had always been an expensive burden in the healthcare environment,” he says. “We’re at a different moment right now.”

In this series, Healthcare Design asks leading healthcare design professionals, firms, and owners to tell us what’s got their attention and to share some ideas on the subject.

Here, Mark Herstein, design manager at Tocci Building Companies (Woburn, Mass.), discusses the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on healthcare design and constructing healthier facilities for the future.

1. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The importance of artwork in the healthcare environment and its role in the healing process has become more widely accepted over the years. But that still doesn’t mean it’s always part of early design discussions.

Rather, art programs are often addressed later on in the project schedule, maybe even after the drywall is up, leaving art consultants and interior designers to scramble to find appropriate pieces that fit on existing walls and ceilings.

Sight and touch are the senses most obviously affected by the built environment, and in a healthcare setting, what you hear and smell are also important factors that can’t be ignored. Masking efforts are one way to go. In some case, you can take a more active approach.

For decades, Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.) had been serving the metro Portland, Ore., area through its Sunnyside Hospital on the southeast side of town, and several medical office buildings (MOBs) on the west side, including Sunset Medical Center. But as the population began to grow, the organization set out to build a new hospital on the existing Sunset MOB property in Hillsboro, Ore., to help it further serve this expanding community.

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.

My first lesson on the value of artwork in a healthcare setting occurred about nine years ago when I was walking the hallways of a maternity ward. It was the middle of the night, I was having regular contractions, but I wasn’t far enough along to be admitted to the hospital. So the nurse gave me the option to walk the hallways for a few hours or go home.

So off I went, walking and walking and walking, and that’s where my husband and I came across a pastel-colored image of a man with shoulder-length wavy blond hair and faded blue jeans holding hands with a child.

Completion date: July 2012

Owner: Ty Cobb Regional Medical Center

Architecture: Earl Architects LLC

Interior design: Maregatti Interiors

Contracting: MPA of Georgia

Engineering: Pruett, Ford & Associates

IT and telecommunications engineer: EDI, Ltd.

Construction: Freese Johnson Construction

Total building area: 155,000 sq. ft. (hospital); 35,000 sq. ft. (MOB)

Total construction cost: $37,159,656 (building); $2,969,514 (site)

Cost/sq.ft.: $239.72 (building); $19.16 (site)

Like other rural facilities across the county, Ty Cobb Healthcare System (Royston, Ga.) felt the pressures of providing rural healthcare in a modern age: rising costs, funding shortages, increasing competition, and a shrinking medical staff population.