Healthcare Design - September 2014 - 71

H E A LT H C A R E D E S I G N S H O W C A S E

Setting the standard
Many innovations of past years are now ingrained in healthcare design
practice. As this new standard emerges, Healthcare Design Showcase
jurors weigh in on the current state of design and what's on the horizon
By Jennifer Kovacs Silvis
EVERY NEW CONCEPT that wows an industry eventually
reaches the day when its application isn't as exciting
as it once was-when it's no longer labeled as innovative. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially if
that concept held enough value in the first place to see
its adoption become standard practice.
That's been the case for many solutions that once
took the healthcare design industry by storm, such
as access to natural daylight or the use of healing art.
Their presence throughout the 100 submissions to this
year's Healthcare Design Showcase was noted by the
program's 25 jurors, who at the same time recognized
that the trend left this year's crop looking pretty similar
to those of previous years.

The industry is shifting gears to
respond to a quickly changing
healthcare landscape and client
needs that are evolving equally fast.
"You wouldn't be wrong if you said there hasn't
been any progression, no real improvement year over
year," says Peter Lambur, architect and principal at
Peter Lambur Architect Inc. (West Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada). "But then you'd be missing the
point: The overall quality of the submissions is rising to
meet the standard set by small handfuls of pioneering
exemplar projects over the past five to 10 years. This
is a very significant development that augurs well for
maintaining a high standard of design into the future."
While the innovations of old settle in to become
expectations for modern medical environments, the
next big idea remains elusive. However, jurors saw hints
of what's to come revealed in a review of the projects
starting on page 90, especially as the industry shifts
gears to respond to a quickly changing healthcare landscape and client needs that are evolving equally fast.
Patients in process
When projects now in progress or recently completed
were launched, healthcare was still in a state of limbo.
To that end, many of this year's submissions illustrate
organizations' interest in earmarking limited capital
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dollars for projects that didn't go out on a limb in
predicting the direction care delivery might take
and instead looked to operational improvements,
notes Kim Ritter, an associate at GBJ Architecture
PC (Portland, Ore.).
"There seems to be more investment in the partnership between care providers and the design
teams in the pursuit of Lean, care quality, and cost
effectiveness," she says. Specifically, submissions
showcased a keen interest in patient and staff
spaces, particularly in creating tangible results like
higher satisfaction.
Lambur highlights the success projects had in
achieving a deeper understanding of the patient
journey that goes beyond more traditional concepts of on-stage and off-stage flows, for example.
"There was a uniformly high level of functional
concept planning. In several cases, designs for patient/staff/service circulation are built on operationally driven Lean design principles, skillfully blended
with wayfinding solutions," he says.
Avein Saaty-Tafoya, CEO of Adelante Healthcare (Phoenix), saw the trend translated to
ambulatory facilities in particular, with building
flow merged with the patient experience. "It was
encouraging to see that more of these spaces
were designed with the perspective of the patient
and authentically removed barriers to care while
improving movement and choice. It seemed to me
that this was accomplished in fewer square feet,
changing the paradigm of multilevel medical office
buildings to smaller, more efficient footprints," she
says.
This process-based innovation, Lambur says,
was characterized by design teams' use of
integrative tools and techniques to drive solutions,
such as "a comprehensive stakeholder-focused
approach to creating and operationalizing a new
model of care (Children's Hospital of Richmond),
a best practices matrix used to monitor and
measure project performance (Ty Cobb Regional
Medical Center), and a clearly articulated suite of
operational/patient-centered/community engagement metrics (Sacred Heart Pediatric Emergency
Department)," he says.

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Healthcare Design - September 2014

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