Healthcare designs flex their flexibility

As always, the 76 entries in the 28th annual Modern Healthcare Design Awards were evaluated on design excellence, functional utility, flexibility and response to patients and family. But it seems, more than ever, flexibility was on the minds of architects and their provider clients.

When describing the award-winning design of the Seattle Children's Hospital Building Hope expansion project, Anita Rossen, an associate partner with ZGF Architects, says that apart from patient safety, flexibility “was the No. 1 driver of the design.”

Flexibility was incorporated into building structures through modular designs that allow for easy repurposing of spaces as well as through including the room and infrastructure to grow—up or out.

Pocono Medical Center's new two-story Dale & Frances Hughes Cancer Center in East Stroudsburg, Pa., has the infrastructure to grow three more stories. Designed as an ambulatory facility, a bridge connecting the building to the main medical center creates the ability to provide inpatient care. Flexibility allows PMC to move forward without being weighed down too much by the uncertainty over future needs of the hospital under healthcare reform.

“No one is clear about what will happen,” says Andrew Jarvis, a principal with EwingCole architects. “But the fact is that Pocono is allowing its future to go in any direction.”

Six entries received awards this year. Seattle Children's and Penn State Hershey (Pa.) Children's Hospital earned Awards of Excellence. Honorable Mention awards go to the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center, Fairbanks, Alaska; and the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Ambulatory Care Center, Boston. And Citations were awarded to the Hughes Cancer Center and the Mother Baby Center at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, both in Minneapolis. Abbott Northwestern is part of Allina Health.

Children's hospitals and cancer centers both care for special patient populations and both have traditionally done well in Modern Healthcare's Design Awards. Jarvis says providers give these facilities increased focus.

“Frankly, a lot of health systems recognize that cancer centers and children's hospitals are a potential magnet for philanthropy,” he says. “So it's not surprising that the investment in the design of these buildings is amplified.”

While children's hospitals might have pioneered the inclusion of positive distractions, Rossen says the “Crayola crayon box design,” popular 10 years ago, is going away as facilities become more sophisticated in recognizing that these distractions have to be “relatable to people of all ages.”

Jarvis explains that cancer patients are repeat visitors and might come to a facility every day for weeks. And, while they are not bedridden, they might be frail, very sick and would rather be at home, at work or digging in their gardens—anywhere but a treatment center. So there is a necessity to provide an interesting environment and allow for either privacy or company depending on how the patient is feeling that day.

Three projects are components of master plans: The curving front exterior of the Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital is but one segment of an arc serving as the new “front door” for the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center complex and marks the completion of its 10-year “transformation.” The execution of Seattle Children's 2030 plan is just getting started and its Building Hope: Cancer, Critical and Emergency Care Expansion project serves as the foundation for redevelopment efforts. Likewise, the Shapiro Ambulatory Care Center at Boston Medical Center also is the starting point of its campus redevelopment.

The Mother Baby Center is something different. It's a joint venture between two Minneapolis providers where separate-but-neighboring facilities created something new. “It's not Children's, it's not Abbott Northwestern,” says Mike Rodriguez, associate vice president and senior project designer at the architectural firm HDR. “They had to check that at the door and come up with something unique with new colors and a new brand.”

Richard Kobus, senior principal of Tsoi/Kobus and Associates who designed the Shapiro Center, says that—in an age of financial and political uncertainty—architecture provides clarity while creating a quality care environment.

“In this time of cost cutting, why does architecture matter?” he asks. “Because it instills pride in the staff and makes them feel enabled to do their job more effectively. It says this building is all about giving quality care and a quality experience of care.”

Follow Andis Robeznieks on Twitter: @MHARobeznieks