The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center's $800 million William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital is set to open Dec. 6, sporting a flexible approach to design that provides space for research, education and, of course, patient care while incorporating new technology as well.
The 12-floor, 460-bed W-shaped Dallas facility replaces 50-year-old St. Paul University Hospital. The existing hospital had “decreasing ability to deploy emerging technology,” UT Southwestern President Dr. Daniel Podolsky said.
“Without some expansion of some sort, we'd be constrained,” he explained.
Architects in the Dallas office of RTKL, a design firm, created space supporting clinical research on every patient floor. A 10,000-square-foot education center offers space for professional education for doctors and nurses along with community education programs.
Videoconferencing technology will allow family members or a patient's primary-care doctor to talk with hospital staff about a patient's treatment or test results, which can be displayed during the discussion.
Videoconferencing also will link operating rooms to other departments such as pathology, which, Podolsky said, is especially important in cancer surgeries. “Instead of running down the hall” with test results, he said, different departments “will have the direct availability to interact in real time.”
Doctors also will be able to check on a patient by video screen, and when a nurse enters a patient's room, his or her name and photo will appear on the patient's television screen via a device embedded in staff ID badges.
The new hospital will have 72 adult and 30 neonatal intensive care-unit rooms. But, as part of the hospital's flexible design, many more could be available if needed, said Dr. Bruce Meyer, executive vice president for UT Southwestern health system affairs.
“All patient rooms can flex to function as an ICU space; administrative space adjacent to our operating rooms may be used for offices today, but in the future those spaces can be converted to operating rooms with minimal disruption,” said Meyer, also a UT Southwestern professor of obstetrics and gynecology. “It's all about thinking ahead and designing a hospital that can adapt to clinical demands.”
Patient-safety and infection-control features also are embedded throughout the new hospital. These include bathrooms with nonslip floors and an advanced air-filtration system. Windows in the 40 emergency department treatment rooms have special gas between their double-glass panes that will allow them to go from “transparent to opaque with a flick of a switch,” Podolsky said.
“It eliminates the need for drapes, which are a source of infection risk,” he said.
The project was financed through about $400 million worth of the 2008 Stimulus Act's Build America bonds, $200 million from philanthropic gifts and $200 million from UT Southwestern faculty physicians.
“That was a reflection of their belief in the importance of this facility,” Podolsky said of the doctors' investment in the project.
Half of the charitable contributions came from former Texas Gov. William Clements Jr., who the new hospital is named after.
Another major Dallas healthcare construction project, the $1.27 billion, 862-bed Parkland Hospital, also has been completed. It is expected to open in June.
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