2025 HCD Conference + Expo Preview: How Stakeholder Engagement Guided UPMC’s New Patient Tower In Pittsburgh

The 2025 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo, heads to Kansas City, Mo., Oct. 25-28, bringing three days of keynote and educational sessions for attendees.

Healthcare Design is previewing some of the upcoming educational sessions in a series of Q+As with speakers, sharing what they plan to discuss and key takeaways they’ll offer attendees.

Session: “E36 – Healing Beyond Walls: Transforming Hospitals into Holistic Family-Care Hubs”

Sunday, Oct. 26, 3:15-4:15 p.m.

Speakers: John Krolicki, vice president, facilities and support services, UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh; Adaheid Mestad, design anthropologist, HGA; Kyle Weisman, vice president and principal, HGA

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s (UPMC) new 17-story inpatient tower marks the Pittsburgh-based hospital’s largest construction project ever at 1.2 million square feet. To help guide the project, UPMC and the project team, including design firm HGA (Minneapolis), saw an opportunity to redefine a human-centric care model by engaging stakeholders such as patients, families, and staff.

One of the key goals of the project, which is expected to be completed in early 2027, is to elevate the patient, family, and staff experience through design with a deeply human touch, including the creation of an amenity space called Lifestyle Village.

Speakers will share insights on the team’s engagement with more than 800 stakeholders and evidence-based design strategies that integrate nature, technology, and community.

Healthcare Design: Why and how did UPMC and HGA approach their mission to create a more family-centric model of care?

Adaheid Mestad (Headsdhot credit: ©Adrienne Fox/HGA)

UPMC’s mission is to shape tomorrow’s health system through innovation, research, and education. When UPMC partnered with HGA to design the new bed tower, we all agreed that the mission had to be embedded into every phase of the design process. What really changed the conversation, though, was when we began working directly with patients and their families.

To start our research, we first held focus groups and asked family members to join alongside their loved ones. When we mapped the patient journey, we didn’t just capture the clinical moments—we asked families to layer in their emotions and experiences, too. That’s when it became clear: To design better systems, services, and spaces, we needed to deeply understand what families go through, not just patients.

That insight reframed our research design to treat families as essential participants in care, not visitors at the margins.

There’s plenty of research on family-centered care in pediatric hospitals but very little focused on adult acute care. So we set out to fill that gap through ethnographic research. We met families in their homes, in temporary housing, or hotels, and we spent time with them during appointments and recovery. Many of these families lived in Pittsburgh for months at a time, becoming “temporary residents.”

From that work, we uncovered powerful insights. Families often felt a loss of agency—they stayed “strong” in the patient’s room, then slipped into stairwells to cry on the phone to a sister or friend. They told us how important peer support was—the families they met became lifelines. At the same time, they were going through cognitive/administration overload, juggling GoFundMe pages, paying bills, helping with homework, and keeping households running from afar. They longed for moments of joy, a place to laugh and gather when friends visited, but often had nowhere to go.

We also heard their fears at discharge: suddenly becoming the primary caregiver felt overwhelming. Families spoke about losing time for their own self-care, and how hard it was to accept help. And we noticed how relationships with staff, local shop owners, baristas, or even a haircut in the neighborhood helped them feel rooted—like they belonged in Pittsburgh, even temporarily.

These insights directly reshaped UPMC’s approach to family-centered care—informing policies, discharge education, communication strategies, and ultimately the creation of the Lifestyle Village: spaces, services, and amenities designed to seamlessly support families as part of the care ecosystem.

The community’s voice was equally important. Through leadership councils, health partnerships, and neighborhood meetings, we heard that well-being isn’t just medical—it’s economic and social, too. Local businesses wanted opportunities, artists wanted to participate, schools wanted spaces for students to engage. One neighbor summed it up perfectly: “That shiny building will be a benefit only when it helps make our children healthier.”

And then, of course, we listened to staff. Through shadowing and interviews, nurses told us they needed environments that maximized time at the bedside and reduced wasted steps. Access to daylight and quiet spaces were essential for their well-being. Staff also shared how exhausted they felt after long shifts—healthy grab-and-go food options could make the transition home easier, avoiding the drive-thru on the way.

Treating families, community, and staff as co-producers of health—supported by spaces, services, and partnerships—led to a design where the Lifestyle Village became essential. At 40,000 square feet, it bridges hospital and community with local businesses and artists at street level and provides “home away from home” spaces for families on the upper floors: living room-style gathering areas, quiet rooms, and technology to connect with loved ones back home.

HCD: “Human-centered healthcare” is a broad term. How do you define it, and how have you applied it at UPMC?

Mestad: You’re right, human-centered healthcare is often used as a broad term and at times as a catch-all phrase, but for us it means understanding the real-time human experience in healthcare—both the assets and the challenges—and using those insights to guide or inspire innovation in design.

At the UPMC Presbyterian Expansion project, the 17-story patient tower, we approached the core definition of our human-centered healthcare design through two main lenses:

• The ecosystem lens: It was important to look beyond the patient and family needs alone in a healthcare setting and to set out to understand the larger ecosystem they live in—family roles, home life, work, and community—and how those factors influence health and healthcare normalcy and new normal. When we account for these nuances, we can ask different questions that lead to more meaningful solutions. Sometimes these are incremental improvements, and other times they are transformative innovations. Core healthcare design fundamentals such as safety, access to daylight and nature, control, acoustics, and efficient care processes remain essential, but by layering in the context of daily life, the design becomes more responsive and relevant.

• The relationship-centered lens: This lens focuses on relationships—not just the individual human experience, but the connections between those people and systems. Healthcare already talks about “relationship-centered care,” but we asked: what if we extend that to include patients and families, staff as employees and teammates, and the hospital’s role as a community partner and economic driver? Looking at these connections—not just isolated data points—helped us reframe our design questions.

For example, How might we strengthen relationships, so patients and families feel less alone during life-altering health situations? How might we create meaningful life moments that patients would otherwise miss during treatment?

For example, one father who had a heart transplant missed his daughter’s high school graduation. Staff played “Pomp and Circumstance” as she walked the inpatient hallway in her cap and gown. That was more than a space—it was human-centered healthcare culture made tangible.

Finally, how might we build partnerships with local businesses and expand supplier diversity to strengthen UPMC’s relationship with the community? These two lenses directly shaped the design of the Lifestyle Village—a set of spaces, services, and partnerships intentionally designed to support and strengthen relationships among families, staff, and the community.

HCD: What makes Lifestyle Village unique from other communities and wellness spaces in healthcare settings?

Kyle Weisman (Headshot credit: ©A.Sklenar Photography, LLC)

What makes Lifestyle Village different is that it isn’t just an amenity space—it’s an ecosystem designed to support the daily lives of patients, families, staff, and the surrounding community. It’s about creating places that feel human, relational, and connected, not just functional.

Take food, for example. Instead of only offering a cafeteria-style setup, families can sit down in a locally owned restaurant where someone actually asks, “How can I take care of YOU during this meal?”  That moment of care matters. At the same time, the space provides opportunities for local restaurants and vendors to participate, which supports the local economy and brings more of Pittsburgh into the hospital.

Education spaces are another example. Education spaces are not just conference rooms—they’re flexible, hands-on learning environments.

A family might take a cooking class to learn how to prepare meals for their loved one’s new diet. Or they might join a workshop on how to organize and manage multiple prescriptions at home. The same space could also host a local school program where students engage in arts and humanities—connecting with the hospital in times of health, not just illness.

Every floor of Lifestyle Village is built around the idea of strengthening relationships. That combination of care, culture, and community is what makes Lifestyle Village stand apart—it’s not an add-on, it’s woven into the experience of healing.

HCD: How have patients, families, and staff responded/reacted so far?

John Krolicki (Image credit: Courtesy of UPMC)

While the project is still under construction and scheduled to open in early 2027, the response from patients, families, staff, and the broader community has been one of enthusiasm and anticipation.

Because nearly 800 stakeholders were directly engaged throughout the research and design process, there is a strong sense of ownership and excitement to see their voices reflected in the new hospital. Many have expressed that the vision of creating a family-centric, community-connected facility feels both validating and transformative—an acknowledgment that their lived experiences helped shape a resource that will redefine care.

Our hope is once open, the hospital will not only elevate the patient and family experience but also strengthen community well-being by delivering on the promise of a holistic, human-centered model of healthcare.

HCD: What’s one takeaway from your session that you hope attendees walk away with?

Weisman: We hope the audience leaves our session with an appreciation for how a fully integrated team, grounded in research and supported by deep stakeholder engagement, can drive meaningful innovation in healthcare design.

By examining the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital expansion project, we hope the attendees will learn how applying evidence-based design and a family-centric approach to adult acute-care environments can elevate the human experience for patients, families, and communities.

Our goal is for participants to see how collaboration across all stakeholders including patients, families and communities, supported by data, insights, and co-creation can expand the boundaries of what healthcare spaces can achieve, ultimately inspiring new ways to design environments that are both human-centered and transformative.

Find updates and additional information on the 2025 HCD Conference + Expo here.

Robert McCune is senior editor of Healthcare Design and can be reached at [email protected].