While many hospital construction projects across the country have used an integrated approach to delivery, including early involvement of the construction manager, it’s not nearly as common for a formal integrated project delivery (IPD) contract to be in place.
Completion date: December 2011
Owner: Children’s National Medical Center
Total building area: 33,000 sq. ft. renovation, plus 33,000 sq. ft. interstitial space
Total construction cost: $22.3 million
Cost/sq. ft.: Approximately $339
Architecture: Wilmot Sanz Inc.
Interior design: Wilmot Sanz Inc.
Contracting: HITT Contracting Inc.
Engineering: Leach Wallace Associates Inc.
Construction: HITT Contracting Inc.
Suppliers/fabricators:
Art/pictures: By owner
The idea: Washington, D.C.'s Children’s National Medical Center opened its East Inpatient Tower in 2007, vacating patient units in its existing building, which created shelled space to be used later.
In a recent blog post, my colleague Kristin Zeit shared a study of Roemer’s Law, or rather the idea that the more beds a hospital has, the more beds it will use. In this case, the Michigan Department of Health’s Certificate of Need Program dug in a little deeper to prove merit of the concept, finding that, indeed, it holds water.
Proton therapy centers are popping up across the country, as the cancer treatment—which uses proton beams to precisely target tumors without damaging surrounding tissue—continues to gain in popularity, especially for tumors in sensitive areas of the body or in children.
The story of cancer treatment in the United States is one of hope, with survival rates today presenting a stark contrast to those of just a few decades ago. In fact, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reports that the five-year survival rate for cancers diagnosed between 2002 and 2008 is 68 percent, up from the 49 percent found between 1975 and 1977.
Cancer survival rates are on the rise, thanks to advancements in treatments as well as personalized cancer care that’s stepped out of the acute care environment and into community outpatient centers across the country.
While assisted living and continuing care retirement community (CCRC) developers were going like gangbusters a few short years ago, the picture is quite different today. Granted, there’s still an estimated 77 million aging baby boomers. But a combination of the housing market crisis and “aging in place” trends has kept many boomers at home.
It’s been an exciting time to cover the healthcare design industry. I can’t remember the last interview I had with a source (whether on the A/E/C or ownership side of the coin) that didn’t touch upon planning for the future. Common themes are almost exclusively tied to healthcare reform—planning for flexibility, patient-centered design, accountable care, efficient workflows, costs-savings strategies, and so on.
You never know what lies around the next corner—it’s one of the great truths of life, yet also what makes it exciting. While what’s sitting around that next corner may be good or bad, it’s the journey toward the unknown that’s so thrilling.
For years after I moved to California, I would grab a friend on the weekend and start driving with no destination in mind. Knowing that the state had so many unique and beautiful small towns, it seemed reasonable that eventually we’d happen across something incredibly cool and unexpected.
Susquehanna Health (Williamsport, Pa.) has been a Center for Health Design Pebble Partner since 2008. It’s an integrated health system that provides services throughout rural central Pennsylvania, with 228 licensed acute beds and the admission of more than 13,000 patients annually.
Health systems, hospitals, and physician practices nationwide are consolidating as a means to maximize profits and restructure how care is provided, a move fueled by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). And many believe the trend is here to stay.
As we move into this new era of healthcare, it’s worth examining why all this consolidation is happening and what it means for facility design and construction.
