When NBBJ (Seattle) was hired to design the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center (CAIHC) in Fairbanks, Alaska, the firm was already familiar with creating healthcare facilities for Alaskan natives, having previously conducted an 18-month cultural study that informed the planning and design of a hospital and three clinics in the Anchorage region.
The idea: What’s known today as the Hoover Pavilion originally opened in 1931 as the Palo Alto Hospital. Stanford University operated the hospital and eventually purchased it in the late 1960s, converting it to medical office space. The building served in this capacity for the following four decades, undergoing several renovations that included a seismic upgrade and a new elevator.
Oftentimes the healthcare design industry at large is asked to think a whole lot about the “B” side of an “A-to-B” scenario.
Clients might ask designers to take an outdated inpatient unit and renovate it to become a modern care setting, or ask a construction manager to take a greenfield site and transform it into a new medical campus.
Either way, goals for the end result have likely been well thought out and communicated to the project team, guiding planning, design, and construction from start to finish.
While it appears healthcare has turned the page from its once lavishly appointed lobbies and two-story atriums to more efficient, practical, and—most importantly—affordable space plans, that doesn’t mean it’s closed the book on hospitality-inspired design altogether.
In fact, there are still plenty of applications for a little five-star treatment.
The headline “World War II bunker found at Dover Hospital site” popped up in my Google alerts today. And, sure enough, as it seems to happen fairly regularly, especially in places like England with hundreds of years of history on top of ours here in the U.S., a construction site yielded an intriguing find.
In the healthcare industry’s shift toward a value-based care delivery model over its current volume-based one, success largely depends upon patients themselves. Providers need patients to be invested in their own health. After all, you can’t begin supporting wellness in place of treating illness if the very people you’re supposed to keep healthy don’t show up at their family doctor’s office from time to time.
Completion date: May 2012
Owner: Boston Medical Center
Architecture: Tsoi/Kobus & Associates
Interior design: Tsoi/Kobus & Associates
Contracting: Suffolk Construction
Engineering: MEP Engineers–AKF Group
Construction: Suffolk Construction
Total building area: 4,000 square feet
Total construction cost:$1,110,000 and $350,000 for A/V
Cost/sq. ft.:$365
The idea: Boston Medical Center (BMC), a 496-bed academic medical center, serves as the primary teaching affiliate for Boston University School of Medicine. Both entities needed a collaborative space that could serve the medical school and hospital by offering simulation practices—the use of computerized mannequins that simulate real-life medical scenarios—in anesthesia, emergency medicine, OB/GYN, surgery, orthopedic surgery, and nursing education.
Back in 2011, Peter Bardwell, 2013 president of the American College of Healthcare Architects, and A. Ray Pentecost III, 2013 president of the International Academy for Design and Health, put together a list of 10 forces they saw changing healthcare design.
Infection control is a critical issue for any hospital. And for Loie Ruhl, infection prevention specialist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, having evidence readily available to support her initiatives in protecting environments under construction was a goal she hoped to achieve.
Healthcare futurist Joe Flower, founder and CEO of Imagine What If Inc., was very clear on precisely what he sees coming down the pike: change. “I don’t know anyone who thinks healthcare works, that it doesn’t need to change,” he said as he launched into his July 23 plenary session at the ASHE Annual Conference in Atlanta.
Three years ago, Northwestern Memorial HealthCare (NMHC) established a mandate that all new facilities projects would utilize building information modeling (BIM)—not just to aid in the building process, but to support ongoing facility management.
