Healthcare Design - August 2017 - 115

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Q&A

with Marc S. Rowland
AIA ACHA, principal
TMPartners, PLLC
What approach does your firm
use to design spaces that
support care delivery today but
provide enough flexibility for
unknowns of the future?
We are always looking for
ways to be good stewards of
our clients' resources. At
the macro scale, we are
utilizing universal structural
grids where future changes
are likely, while also creating
infrastructure that will
support logical changes
without major expenditures
when that inevitable change
occurs. At the micro scale,
we are designing spaces that
can easily be transformed
in the future, such as
flexible support spaces in
the emergency, imaging,
and surgical departments
that can be transformed into

clinical spaces. We have
learned significantly from
our experience retrofitting
facilities that were not
designed to support future
unknowns so gracefully.
What's one critical question
your team always asks
clients in initial project
meetings? Why? We always
ask about the future. What
do your demographics look
like? What service lines are
growing, and are any service
lines declining? Our goal
in asking those questions
is to understand what may
be happening that might
inform some basic planning
decisions that we are going
to make. For example, we
are thinking about growth
strategies to support future

growth of the facility, whether
it is leaving a growth corridor
open on the site or whether it
is planning all or part of the
facility for vertical expansion.
In our opinion, that is a
baseline decision.
What's one major design or
care delivery trend that's
shaping your work today?
And how so? New delivery
trends in emergency care have
profoundly changed the way

that we approach emergency
department design. In the
last five years, we have been
involved in the design of 50
emergency departments, and
we have made significant
changes in our approach. In
the past, we would design a
low-acuity or fast track area
with smaller rooms or cubicles
and a nurse sub-station; today,
we are designing a discrete
area for low-acuity patients
including space for subwaiting, delivery of certain
diagnostic services, and
consultation, to allow for quick
turnover of spaces, in order to
facilitate increased throughput
and patient satisfaction.
Tell us something surprising
about your company that
people may not know.
Although we have grown
over the years, it is always
our desire to become better
rather than bigger. We still
have meaningful principal
involvement in every project,
and we leverage the knowledge
gleaned from the stakeholders
and post-occupancy interviews
to create healthcare facilities
that support the healing
process by embracing best
demonstrated practices. That
is part of what has allowed us
to be honored by our clients
with a 95% repeat client
rate. We have been fortunate
to work with some wonderful
clients over the years including
Ascension Health, CHS, Emory
Healthcare, HCA, Partners
Healthcare, RCCH, and
Vanderbilt.
www.tmpartners.com

Martha's Vineyard Hospital. Photo: ©2010 Peter Vanderwarker
http://www.tmpartners.com http://www.tmpartners.com
Healthcare Design - August 2017

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