Healthcare Design - December 2020 - 28

REVIEW
KEYNOTE

A N S WE R I NG A CA L L
TO A C TIO N

One solution to managing care over these
months that several of the panelists agreed is
here to stay is telehealth, with Jones noting that
it came to the forefront very rapidly for MetroHealth. Grandy added that Kaiser Permanente's primary care visits delivered through
telehealth have risen from 15 percent preCOVID-19 to more than 80 percent. " The longer this [pandemic] goes on, the more people
will accept it, " he said, adding that in the past,
telehealth was thought of as a convenience, but
going forward it should be looked at through the
lenses of affordability and accessibility.
BaRoss said Perkins&Will spent the spring
working collaboratively with industry partners
through the Greater New York Hospital Association to develop surge capacity plans for the
region. " The stats from New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo were very motivating, " she said. Their
work included reviewing 29 sites for potential
to become temporary care sites and developing a rapid assessment tool to help clients in
their decision-making. Lessons learned in the
process include that surge facilities associated
with an existing facility or hospital were the
best options, as one of the biggest challenges
was figuring out staffing and supplies. Going
forward, she said the industry needs to more
deeply consider how the ﬁt-out of these spaces
can support caregivers, as well.
Sharing her perspective as a builder, Clark
Construction's Wagner said speed became
paramount this spring, with solutions such as
prefabrication and modular construction embraced. " Material availability was another big
factor, " she said. In response, Clark Construction created an assessment tool to use with clients and is focusing on learning what's worked
to inform future situations.
HKS' Stouffer said one issue that needs rethinking is resiliency. " Most emergency planning in hospitals and facilities was [for events]
of a brief duration, " such as a weather disaster or
chemical spill, while the current pandemic has
lasted months, he said. That extended duration
means the industry needs to " rethink how we
plan for future surges, " he said.
And while a big focus of discussion has been
the need for flexibility in design, he added the
term can mean lots of things to different organizations. To help guide that conversation,
HKS has broken down the idea into four areas:
versatility, modifiability, convertibility, and

DURING THE opening keynote session for HCD

Virtual, panelist David Grandy, vice president
of delivery system design and innovation at
Kaiser Permanente, reminded attendees that
it was the 291st day since the first COVID-19
case was diagnosed in the U.S. Furthermore, he
reﬂected on all that's changed since then. In the
early months of the pandemic, Kaiser PermanCarolyn BaRoss
ente, like many other organizations, focused its
efforts on expanding capacity in anticipation
of patient surge. As the pandemic progressed,
and demand didn't meet those expectations,
the organization turned its efforts to learning
more about COVID-19, its transmission, and
how it could be prevented. " We know much
more now, " including about early treatment and
when it's best to put a patient on a ventilator,
Grandy said.
Walter Jones
That perspective as well as some of the lessons learned over the last nine months and best
practices that could be applied to healthcare
planning, design, and operations in the future
were shared with attendees throughout the discussion moderated by Healthcare Design Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Kovacs Silvis. Panelists
included Grandy; Carolyn BaRoss, principal,
health, at Perkins&Will; Walter Jones, senior
Barbara Wagner
vice president of campus transformation at
The MetroHealth System; Jeff Stouffer, global
director, principal, and executive vice president at HKS Inc.; and Barbara Wagner, executive vice president at Clark Construction.
Grandy explained that Kaiser Permanente
used the summer months, when cases were in
decline, to " get upstream, " including getting
all clinical environments and clinicians up to
David Grandy
speed on the pandemic. Looking ahead, Grandy
says testing, including increasing capacity and
expediting results, will be the key to " breaking
the chain of cases. "
Panelist Jones said MetroHealth had a similar experience, moving through a spring of
unknowns and learning how to plan for the
anticipated case influx from both medical and
logistical angles. In his organization's case,
Jeff Stouffer
MetroHealth decided to relocate patients from
a skilled nursing facility to other locations in the community and convert
the building to a surge facility, which ultimately wasn't used.

DECEMBER 2020

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Healthcare Design - December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - December 2020