Healthcare Design - August 2015 - 40

Answering unknowns
As Parkland prepares for an opening this month, the
team behind it is realizing a scenario that was anticipated years ago and is now confirmed: Healthcare is
changing. "Healthcare reform was just talked about
back in 2009-2011, so we were designing a building
for the future and we didn't know what healthcare
reform was going to do," says Lou Saksen, senior vice
president, New Parkland construction at Parkland
40 HCDmagazine.com 08.15

Health & Hospital System. To that end, much of what
was designed into the Parkland that stands today was
created with the ability to adapt.
For starters, all of the 862 beds aren't just acuity adaptable but standardized-from ICU to med/
surg to labor and delivery, allowing them to be easily
reassigned based on need. Parkland's nine C-section
rooms and 27 ORs were built to similar standards,
bringing the building's total invasive surgery space to
36 with the ability to flex either use when necessary.
In the ED, 10 Level 1 trauma rooms are built with OR
capabilities.
Additionally, Saksen says, at least 100,000 square
feet of shelled space was included, largely in the WISH
tower but also via individual shelled rooms dispersed
throughout the facility to easily adjust to volume
changes resulting from reform. The diagnostic and
treatment base was also designed with expansion
zones where additions can be made. "There was an
overall expectation that whatever we did had to be flexible and expandable," Adams says.
Another key to preparing the building for the un-

Top: The NICU features
decentralized caregiver
workstations for staff to
more easily observe patients.
Above: The hospital's 96 NICU
rooms were designed with
distinct caregiver and family
zones, including ample room
for family members to stay the
night and a queen-size sleeper
sofa.
ARCHITECT: HDR + CORGAN, © 2014 ANDREW POGUE

to go there," she says.
For specific interior spaces, the Parkland team
sought feedback from numerous professionals and
stakeholders to ensure the design was right, including
a patient and family advisory committee and nurse
liaison team. "I believe you can't have too much
information to get the right answer," Harper says. "We
tried to assimilate the feedback and the information
we were getting from everyone, tried to discern what
of that got back to our guiding principles and how
they fit, and then, to add another layer on, we had to
look at what the cost of each one of those was."
Part of that process was an extensive use of physical mockups that began even before the project
broke ground, specifically to ensure that spaces-
from an inpatient room to an OR to a trauma elevator
cab-were sized properly.
Inpatient rooms, in particular, evolved as the team
responded to the feedback that poured in. "The biggest thing with the mockup was not to have just one
or two opinions on the space. We had hundreds of
staff members come through and make comments,"
Roelofs says. The result is rooms that are 360
square feet, acuity-adaptable, and samehanded,
with a spacious family zone and outboard toilet room
at the footwall. "We had this idea at the beginning
that we were designing from the patient room out,"
Adams says. "We had to get the patient room right."

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Healthcare Design - August 2015

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