Improving Surgery Efficiency With An OR “Megafloor”
An academic medical center hospital must accommodate a large spectrum of surgeries, from the most acute and high-risk to more “tried and true” procedures.
Each surgery uses different tools, nurse ratios, and requirements for prep and recovery. As medical technology advances, surgeries that used to be allowable only in a hospital setting are now possible in an outpatient setting, and this increases more and more every day.
The under-construction University of California Irvine (UCI) Health – Irvine campus in Irvine, Calif., features an innovative platform to improve surgical efficiency and flexibility: a “megafloor” that connects inpatient and outpatient operating rooms (ORs) between two buildings.
The solution allows the hospital to perform any surgery anywhere by altering the workflow and space designation as decided each day by the surgical department.
Surgical megafloor features
Implementation required reconciling the different jurisdictions, seismic requirements (if applicable for code compliance) and required separations between the hospital and outpatient buildings to make them seem like one building.
For example, the buildings are separated by a 4-hour fire barrier, designed to be invisible by implementing magnetically held, open-rated doors and hidden fire separations.
The 56,000 square-foot suite has 18 standardized operating rooms designed for seamless flow from one building to the other. This set-up allows the surgical team to determine how to use any room or block of rooms for ease of use for the providers and safety for the patient.
Furthermore, by grouping inpatient and outpatient ORs, the supply chain and sterilization operates as a single large-scale operation, with strict quality and safety checks and an optimized flow to ensure that instruments and case carts are always ready and checked.
This high level of quality control reduces errors and waste in a streamlined process. It also allows quicker turnover, and each OR can be used for either inpatient or outpatient procedures based on demand.
Megafloor planning and design
To bring this concept to realization, CO Architects’ Los Angeles-based architecture and interiors team, working in conjunction with design-build project leader Hensel Phelps, built the megafloor virtually in a computer model and ran it through a year of simulated operations to eliminate bottlenecks and test any imaginable scenario.
UCI Health’s director of surgery oversaw the “virtual year” and made modifications to the workflow, which were then also simulated and proven out.
With the final design, surgical operations at UCI Health – Irvine are taken to the next level of adaptability and quality, allowing this academic medical center to push the boundaries of surgical performance.
The project is on track for completion in October 2025.
Gina Chang, AIA, EDAC, is a principal and healthcare team leader at CO Architects (Los Angeles) and can be reached at [email protected].