Modern Healthcare Design Award winners fuse healing atmosphere, efficient workplaces

For three decades, participants in the Modern Healthcare Design Awards have sought to advance the concept of a healing environment. This year, the 30th annual contest saw a coming together of efforts to refine that concept while integrating the sometimes-conflicting principles of value-based design.

Several of this year's eight judges lamented a lack of innovation and a sameness among some entries, which they attributed to the trend toward efficient, flexible modular designs. Still, there was general agreement that the winning entries succeeded in melding the healing environment and value-based design concepts into projects that achieved smooth workflows, patient-centered amenities and stunning visuals.

This year's gold-winning project is the Memorial Sloan Kettering West Harrison (N.Y.) Cancer Center, designed by Philadelphia-based EwingCole. The silver winner is St. Charles Cancer Center, Bend, Ore., designed by Portland-base ZGF Architects. The bronze winner is Prebys Cardiovascular Institute on the Scripps Memorial Hospital campus in San Diego, designed by the Los Angeles office of HOK architects.

This year's 58 entries were evaluated on the basis of overall design excellence, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency, flexibility, functional utility and response to family and patient needs.

New to the contest this year is the Senior-Friendly Design Award. The inaugural winner is the Center for Advanced Care on the Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center campus in Chicago, designed by the Chicago office of SmithGroupJJR. Designs were judged on how well they met the specific needs of older patients, such as entrances designed for ease of walking with caregivers, noise-reduction measures, and features to reduce patient falls.

Henry Chao, the healthcare design director in HOK's New York office who served as a judge, said the definition of value-based design is evolving and that for any given project it can even change between the beginning of a project and its completion. But some elements are now considered standard. “If a project doesn't address the issues of sustainability or flexibility, the designers are not competent,” said Chao, who did not vote on the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute designed by his firm.

Cancer centers and children's hospitals traditionally have scored high in the Design Awards. But this year, oncology facilities stood out. Rulon Stacey, who chairs the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award board of overseers and who served as a judge, said other healthcare sectors should follow their example.

“Oncology has uniquely understood for a long time the magnitude of what they're doing and how healing is more than just chemotherapy,” said Stacey, a faculty member in the University of Minnesota Master's of Health Administration program. “The rest of the industry has to find out what they can learn from them.”