Two years after opening the new UNC Health Rex Cancer Center in Raleigh, N.C., BSA LifeStructures (Indianapolis), the architecture and design team on the project, and owner UNC Health (Chapel Hill, N.C.) conducted a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) to consider the success of the project.
During a session at the 2024 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo, Oct. 5-8 in Indianapolis, speakers Emmeline Madsen, director of business development and project management at UNC Health Rex; Kenyon Worrell, architect, principal, and chief operating officer at BSA LifeStructures; Wendy St. John, operational planner at BSA; and Zahra Zamani, director of research at BSA, shared some of the results and findings of the project evaluation.
Cancer center replacement project
The 4-story, 144,000-square-foot cancer center opened in February 2022 on a parking lot site across from the main UNC Health Rex campus.
The new center was built to replace an annex on the main campus that dated to 1987 as well as a satellite clinic across the street that had opened to address overcrowding issues.
The new building is laid out with registration, radiation, oncology, laboratory, and community support services on the ground floor; clinic offices on the second floor; infusion, pharmacy, and research on the third floor; and shell space on the fourth floor for future growth.
Growing pains of a new cancer center
During the POE, the speakers noted that nurses, physicians, registration staff, and operational managers shared feedback on welcome changes as well as some growing pains.
For example, the new facility is larger and departments are more spread out, and staff members who had become accustomed to working closer together—some of them for 30 years or more in the tighter quarters—expressed that they missed “literally rubbing shoulders” with colleagues in other departments as they walked the corridors of the new facility, St. John said.
The design of the new facility also doesn’t include a cafeteria—the intention being that staff would utilize food services at the main hospital. The center also sometimes hires food trucks, but St. John said many employees still expressed a need for more food choices.
Patients and staff did praise the new facility’s “light and airy, comfortable and calm environment,” she said.
Additionally, staff said they are taking advantage of shared break rooms and respite areas, such as an outdoor terrace off one of the clinics that is very popular.
Maximizing layouts and department adjacencies
The speakers said they also heard feedback on spaces, including what’s working and changes that have been—or need to be—made.
For example, St. John said an underutilized space in the new facility is the sacred space. “It’s tucked away in a corner for a nice, private, and quiet space and then often forgotten by patients or family members,” she said.
Additionally, patient registration on the second floor often becomes congested. “The checkout process was originally designed to be in the room, but when we moved it into the facility, due to some staffing shortages, we had to move the discharge process out to the waiting space, with some furniture solutions,” St. John said.
One change that’s been made since the facility opening is converting a conference room into more space for a therapeutic gym.
Impact of artwork in oncology spaces
Worrell, the principal in charge of the project, said a goal with the design was to create a space for cancer care that felt less institutional and more empathetic to patients and staff with a focus on “mind, body, and spirit.”
To achieve this, the project team incorporated visually stimulating artwork (a private collection that was donated) and calming music in some areas, which have been well received, according to Worrell.
“What we saw with all of the research, and I think is commonplace in many designs, is that waiting and reception areas need to have warmth and be welcoming … bringing in light and art … especially in oncology care, to move as far away as possible from the institutional appearance,” Worrell said.
More coverage of the 2024 HCD Conference + Expo will be featured in Healthcare Design’s November/December issue. For more conference new and updates, go here.
Robert McCune is senior editor at Healthcare Design magazine and can be reached at [email protected].
