Healthcare Design - September 2017 - 34

THE

HCD 10

TEAM MVP

CHRISTINA GRIMES
AIA, EDAC, LEED AP BD + C, architect and senior project healthcare
planner at Ballinger (Philadelphia)

of Grimes' first clients at Ballinger-and
one of her first projects in the healthcare sector-was Reading Health System, where she worked on a modernization
project in 2006 for the hospital campus in West Reading,
Pa. Over the next decade, she continued to partner with
the organization on a variety of renovation projects. That
experience came to be invaluable when Grimes was tapped
to work directly with Reading Health's senior leadership
team to master plan the new 487,000-square-foot Reading
Healthplex for Advanced Surgical + Patient Care, which
opened in early 2017. When it was time to build, Grimes
brought her deep understanding of the culture and community of the
hospital from previous projects on the campus to the design team. For
example, a decentralized storage model and clinical workspace concept that were tested in three previous inpatient bed floor renovations

became influential building blocks in the new
Healthplex bed tower.
To further ensure the design solutions developed were appropriate, Grimes created a questionnaire during the planning process,
engaging 42 distinct user groups in 24 rounds
of meetings for more than 10,000 staff hours of
discussion on the design. Using the results, she
associated design elements according to their
priority rank across the multigenerational workforce to understand what features resonated with
a particular group. At the time, 62 percent of the
nursing staff was baby boomers, but this demographic was expected to shift with the growth of
the millennial workforce. Grimes' work helped
ensure that the new building design met the needs
of current staff as well as incoming workers. For
example, while features such as welcoming staff
lounges and access to natural light appealed to
all generations, patient lifts in each patient room
ranked high with the baby boomer staff. This
knowledge led the administration to commit to a
100 percent patient-lift room model within the
bed tower. Grimes also brought her evidencebased design knowledge to the table with the
broader design team to further shape the project,
delivering prominent handwashing stations, decentralized nurses' and supply stations, family areas, daylighting, and views to nature (including an
88,000-square-foot green roof that covers the procedural platform). The fruits of these efforts were
realized when the building opened in early 2017.

YEAR IN REVIEW:

WHAT'S NEXT: Now that the Reading Healthplex is

fully active, Grimes is developing a post-occupancy
evaluation (POE) to study the effects of the decentralized supply stations and patient lifts, as well as
work patterns of the staff , to see if the results vary
from her initial planning study. She's also busy
working on an emergency room expansion and an
ambulatory care center project and leading POEs
on several other projects.

A patient room at Reading Healthplex for Advanced Surgical + Patient Care

34

SEPTEMBER 2017

HCDMAGAZINE.COM

ED WHEELER (HEADSHOT); HALKIN MAS ON PHOTOGRAPHY (READING HEALTHPLE X )

WHO SHE IS : One
http://www.HCDMAGAZINE.COM
Healthcare Design - September 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - September 2017
