Anne DiNardo

One thing is for sure in our uncertain healthcare future: Big box outpatient centers are expected to play a bigger role in helping healthcare systems expand their patient base and enhance care. These spaces, which integrate ambulatory services in one location, help overcome expansion issues on crowded main campuses, where land is at a premium. Technology has also enabled more services to move out of the hospital setting to a building that’s more convenient to patients and less expensive to build. And patients seem to prefer them.

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

Pursuing LEED is the best investment you can make in building new, says Breeze Glazer, associate, research knowledge manager, Perkins+Will (New York), and Gail Vittori, co-director, Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems (Austin, Texas). Why?

Waiting is a major part of the hospital experience. “The patient is waiting to go home, the family is waiting to get test results,” says Erin Peavey, researcher and medical planner at HOK (New York).  “Everybody is waiting their time out. So what is that experience like from these different perspectives?”

While some community landmarks improve the local landscape with artwork that’s nice to view,  Good Samaritan Regional Health Center, in Mt Vernon, Ill., installed a piece that appeals to residents’ eyes and ears. A new entry bell tower on the hospital campus is reminiscent of an old Catholic church bell tower and is filled with approximately 50 bells that play whenever the wind blows.

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

Here, Dan Stanek, executive vice president at Big Red Rooster, a multidimensional brand experience firm in Columbus, Ohio, talks about the shifting marketplace, integrating healthcare and wellness under one roof, and using technology to enrich the consumer experience.

With so much emphasis on the patient experience, it’s no wonder that hospitality-like amenities, environments, and services are finding a home in healthcare.

A study by Health Research Institute at PricewaterhouseCoopers reports 72 percent of consumers ranked personal experience as a main factor when choosing a medical provider. Patients today know they have options and providers are on notice to deliver a higher level of personalized service and satisfaction or risk losing loyalty and ultimately revenue.

To launch its first London reproductive and sexual health center that’s open seven days a week, England’s National Health Service (NHS) engaged designers and architects from outside the healthcare specialty in a competition to create a new space for its Burrell Street Clinic (London).

The American Medical Association (AMA) made headlines this month during its House of Delegates Annual Meeting when it announced a new policy recognizing obesity as a disease.

Not every project comes with the opportunity to push boundaries. But that’s exactly what GBBN Architecture (Cincinnati) was given when it partnered with Mercy Fairfield on the fit out of a fifth floor shell space into an acute care unit. The intention was to have the floor match the layout and aesthetic of the existing fourth floor. “There were a lot of conditions that were already established,” says Michael Lied, senior project manager, principal, at GBBN. “We said what can we push and what can we change?”

I’ve attended Neocon several times in my 10-plus years covering design, but this was my first visit looking at the show through the eyes of healthcare. Walking away from this week’s event, three topics were clearly top of mind: senior living spaces, chemicals of concern, and hospital acquired infections (HAIs).