DALLAS — Parkland Health & Hospital System has selected the Kansas City, Mo.-based firm Burns & McDonnell to provide commissioning services as Parkland continues to build out its hospital campus in Dallas. 

The new 2.8-million-square-foot Parkland campus is nearly twice the size of the old hospital on the site in Dallas County.  The Dallas-Fort Worth area experienced the largest expansion in population of any metropolitan area in the country in 2018, according to U.S. News & World Report, which means the ninth-most-populated city in the country will be in need of such expansion in the healthcare field as well. 

The Parkland hospital sees over one million patients annually, according to their website, with the medical facility offering a Level 1 Trauma Center, Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the second-largest burn care facility in the country.  It is also the teaching hospital for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Burns & McDonnell’s commissioning team will ensure that the Parkland hospital’s performance is met within the parameters of the design, construction and programming criteria set forth within the project’s multiyear Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) agreement.  The firm will oversee the ongoing construction operation, test and verify all of the new systems as well as oversee new equipment rollouts after the construction phase has been completed.

Part of the Burns & McDonnell plan includes meeting LEED v4 certification, which entails not only monitoring the quality of the hospital’s air, but also working on such internal systems as HVAC, room pressurization, humidity control, emergency power supply, plumbing, lighting controls and security.

One of the first parts of the project entails the design and build-out of a six-floor, 525,000-square-foot outpatient clinic, encompassing laboratories, offices and examination and treatment spaces.

According to Parkland’s website, Parkland Health & Hospital System was founded as a company in 1894, and has since seen such growth that they are now operators of one of the largest public hospital systems in the United States. 

Parkland President and CEO Fred Cerise was quoted in the Dallas Weekly this month—on the 125th anniversary of the company’s founding—as saying that Parkland is an integral part of the Dallas County health system and “was created with the mission to care for our community’s most vulnerable residents.”

Burns & McDonnell, encompassing over 7,000 employees, is 100 percent employee-owned and was included on Fortune magazine’s 2019 list of “Best Companies to Work For.”  The company has provided more than $11 billion in new construction within the past four years.   

“We’re excited to help Parkland implement a commissioning program that will be an integral part of Parkland’s mission to provide medical aid and hospital care to area patients,” Kyle Lambert, commissioning manager for Burns & McDonnell, said in a statement.  “At Parkland, the goal is to provide high-quality, safe care for their patients through compassion, skill and teamwork. We support Parkland’s vision and are committed to delivering a comprehensive commissioning approach focused on collaboration, accountability and attention to detail.”

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FORT ST. JAMES, B.C. – A concept plan submitted in 2015 for a new replacement of Fort St. James B.C.’s Stuart Lake Hospital was recently approved by the provincial government and will begin shifting into the business plan phase.

The business plan phase finalizes details such as the scope and budget of the project and will take between 12 and 18 months. Upon approval of the business plan, the project will begin procurement and then construction. This can be helped along with the assistance of an accounting consulting firm like kruzeconsulting.com who will be able to take into account all financials and project what the potential outcome will be.

The existing hospital opened in 1972 and is lacking in terms of space, functionality and technology.

Furthermore, the project offers a response to the growing population in the region and the increased need for medical care.

“The new hospital will bring better acute, primary and community care for people living in Fort St. James, local First Nations and the surrounding area. For a growing senior population in the region and for the economy as a whole, it is an essential public service,” said Health Minister Adrian Dix.

Currently, the hospital has 12 beds and offers emergency, acute and complex care as well as residential.

The project will be built to a LEED Gold standard, as required for all new hospitals in the province.

“Stuart Lake Hospital is an important part of the community and a place of healing that many people in the region rely on,” said Colleen Nyce, chair of the Northern Health board. “It’s exciting to see that a new, modern facility will be built, which will offer high levels of public health care that will respect and reflect local Indigenous culture.”

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NANTUCKET, Mass. – Situated 30 miles at sea in a facility nearly 60 years old, Nantucket Cottage Hospital (NCH) has been serving its island community for over 100 years, with the facility being the only healthcare option for its 11,000 permanent residents as well as 60,000 seasonal residents.

The island’s new 120,000-sqaure-foot, 14-bed hospital is a right-sized facility that seeks to transform the patient experience and increases access to providers.

The new NCH confronts the shifting seasonal populations as well as fluctuating weather patterns to ensure functionality throughout all conditions.

Ultimately, NCH selected Cannon Design of Boston to build a hospital that can withstand even the most severe weather events, including hurricanes. NCH is designed to be the “last building standing,” prioritizing safety and resilience and is said to be able to withstand Category 5 hurricanes and up to 185 mph winds. The facility is scheduled to be open to patients by the end of 2018.

Mike Cavanaugh, sustainability leader at CannonDesign, spoke to HCO News to discuss hurricane preparedness and hurricane-resilient design.

Q: What are the standard operation plans for hurricanes in healthcare facilities?

Cavanaugh: Emergency plans vary depending on location, climate and the acuity of patient population served. For inpatient hospitals these emergency preparedness plans can range from partial shut-down and of non-critical care functions to maintaining full operations with supplies and plans for temporary housing of housing medical staff. We work with our clients to ensure first that they have a plan and then we to design toward it. One way we are able to assist in that is by providing natural disaster impact risk (or resilience) assessments. For example in coastal Massachusetts, the primary risks may be storm surge, flooding and high winds. In California, however, we may be more focused on extended drought and wildfires. In some cases, as we see more frequently, now, these plans may tie in to a larger regional strategy with other healthcare facilities and local governments.

Q: What are some design techniques/features a facility can incorporate to prepare for/withstand hurricanes?

Cavanaugh: It’s not just about preparing for hurricanes, it’s designing hospitals to be resilient to storms, climate change, new technology, power loss and more. When we think of storms, the most common design features of resilient structures are investing in windows and materials that can withstand intense winds, flood walls, elevated power sources and patient floors, to name just a few. A few other things building owners should consider:

• Invest in future weather prediction. Designers and building owners can use tools like the U.S. Climate Resilient Toolkit to model which climate changes will create new environmental conditions over time. Then, they can design hospitals to not just be resilient to current challenges, but those that will develop in the future. They could also consider accessing personal weather stations that can help the staff to prepare for upcoming weather events. This should ensure that workers are aware of any extreme weather that is forecast.
• Embrace redundancy. Loss of power is always a threat to healthcare facilities and failing to design redundancies into power systems can leave health facilities without power for extended time or during severe weather events. Critical to any resilient design solution is the incorporation of multiple redundancies into a building’s power infrastructure via generators and on-site reserve fuel for these challenging moments

Q: What specific supplies/services are in place at Nantucket for emergency weather conditions? Are there any innovative electronic/technological systems integrated into the facility for hurricane preparedness/protection?

Cavanaugh: Nantucket Island and its residents face unique challenges. Given its location in the Atlantic Ocean, NCH must regularly deal with inclement weather. The new hospital is designed to withstand potentially catastrophic conditions and provide critical services while “off-the-grid” when weather cuts off access to the mainland, Prepared to be the “last building standing” the facility is equipped with dual fuel electrical generating capacity to provide system redundancy, mechanical elements well above grade in case of severe flooding, materials to withstand 150 MPH hurricane winds, and operable windows for ventilation in the event the HVAC loses power.

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The hospital’s emergency department was originally built to serve 35,000 patients. The increase in patient traffic at the Augusta Health ER over the past 20 years has led to patients often being served in hallways or corridors during especially busy times. “The hospital is not only seeing more patients, but patients of higher acuity with trauma, strokes and heart attacks,” said Mary Mannix, Augusta Health president and chief executive officer at Augusta Health, in a recent statement.

The addition and renovation will allow the hospital to expand and grow as the community it serves does the same, according to Mannix. The current space constraints of the hospital limits its ability to accommodate and upgrade to the significant innovations in medical equipment and technology in recent years, and the intention of the hospital’s expansion is to make these upgrades possible.

The plans for the expansion include a 33,000-square-foot, two-story addition, as well as renovating the existing 17,500-square-foot facility. Completion of the project is set for 2019. The expansion will include 48 large, private rooms and dedicated areas for stroke, heart attack and other trauma cases. There will be areas for family consultation, private conversations and for meetings with doctors. Enhanced workspace for EMS, police and mental health professionals are also included in the plans for expansion. A new ambulatory entrance with a canopy will also be built, and 16,288 square feet of shelled space for future use are included in the expansion.

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LA JOLLA, Calif. — The new Jacobs Medical Center at UC San Diego Health in La Jolla opened on Nov. 20, 2016. Construction began in 2012, and the center was named in recognition of a $75 million gift from the Joan and Irwin Jacobs family. The 245-bed new medical center brings cutting-edge technology for cancer treatment and other specialty care.

The 509,500-square-foot 10-story facility had a budget of $943 million. Architecture and interior design were provided as a collaboration between the Yazdani Studio of Cannon Design in Los Angeles and Cannon Design’s Los Angeles Office. The general contractor was Kitchell Contractors out of their San Diego and Phoenix, Ariz. offices.

The Jacobs Medical Center will contribute to meet the healthcare needs of San Diego County — San Diego is California’s second-most populated city, with 3.3 million residents, and 17 percent fewer acute-care beds per 100,000 residents compared to the statewide average, according to a statement. The medical center includes three specialty centers: one for women and infants, a cancer center, and an advanced surgery center.

The design team created over 60 design concepts with a wide range of configurations and relationships to other buildings on the campus throughout the process, according to William D. Hamilton, AIA, principal at Cannon Design. “The scheme continually changed over time, with the footprint and building envelope being driven by the number of beds per unit, and the number of rooms with windows and daylight defining the floorplate.”

The surgical center has 14 operating rooms with an advanced surgical suite of four operating rooms. The center also has an MRI and 64-slice CT scanner for real-time imaging. The medical center houses a cancer center with 108 beds in addition to its 245 acute-care beds. There is an entire floor in the cancer center dedicated to blood and bone marrow transplant surgery and recovery. One of the state-of-the-art features of the cancer center is a floor that receives specially filtered air to help protect patients with compromised immune systems, according to a statement.

The hospital also houses an intensive-care unit with 36 beds in family-friendly rooms, 36 postpartum beds and a 52-room, neonatal intensive-care unit. Each room in the birth center has its own built-in birthing tub. There is even a “serenity room” in the hospital, beautifully designed with wooden curved benches and walls that promote relaxation through their design.

The Jacobs Medical Center is a triangular building, with a unique curvilinear design, and is connected by footbridges to UCSD’s Thornton Hospital on the La Jolla campus. “The geometry creates a subtle continuous flowing curve of the exterior — a dynamic form that changes as one passes around the building’s perimeter,” said Hamilton. Most rooms at the hospital have floor-to-ceiling windows to maximize natural light with panoramic views of San Diego, and gardens outside the facility designed to promote healing.

There are dedicated family areas with lounges and kitchenettes on each inpatient floor, and outdoor terraces and courtyards. Every floor and patient room is decorated with the 150-piece art collection donated by philanthropist Joan Jacobs that includes paintings, photographs and sculptures by renowned artists. There is a rooftop helicopter landing pad, and the building has a low-carbon footprint that meets the requirements for LEED-Silver certification.

Some LEED-Silver features of the hospital include a drought-tolerant plantings and sprawling green space at the ground level and at the patient level via raised gardens, according to Hamilton. The overall curvilinear form of the hospital maximizes daylight and minimizes solar gain and glare. Fritted glass serves as buffer to the southern sunlight, minimizing the building’s cooling output. The building is in close proximity to bus and light-rail transit, provides designated parking for low-emitting vehicles, and includes bike storage and changing rooms to encourage alternative transportation.

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CANTON, Ga. — The Northside Hospital Cherokee in Canton has been making plans to upgrade and build a new hospital for close to 10 years. Construction began in Jan. 2014, with the new updated hospital slated to open on May 6, replacing the old 1960 facility that is still currently in use in North Canton. The new full-service community hospital will have more than 600 physicians and 1,700 employees.

The budget for the new 700,000-square-foot Cherokee hospital is $280 million, with 300 more employees than the old hospital, according to a statement. The architect on the project is Howell Rusk Dodson Architects (HRD) in Atlanta, and the general contractor is Batson Cook (also in Atlanta). Construction is already complete on the new hospital, according to Dale Lee, lead design architect at HRD, and will open with more than twice the square footage as the old hospital. Northside Hospital staff is focused on training and education between now and when hospital doors open, while overseeing the installations of equipment and furniture. The goal of the new hospital is to replace the existing facility with state-of-the-art modernized features, expansion capabilities for future growth and to upgrade the level of service for the people of Canton, according to Lee.

The new hospital is built on 50 acres of land, and will have 150 patient rooms, including a 24-bed ICU unit, 45 emergency department exam rooms, inpatient and outpatient radiology and cardiology, and six operating rooms, according to Lee. It will also have a cancer center and infusion center, an outpatient surgery center, and a 900-space parking deck. The new hospital will also have a women’s center — which the previous hospital did not — that will have 13 labor and delivery rooms, two C-Section rooms, and a Zen garden built outside, according to Lee.

Design aspects of the hospital were inspired by the Cherokee community, following Cherokee’s motto, “Where metro meets the mountains,” according to Lee. “We wanted to create some nice public spaces. We wanted to make sure we combined high end materials that you would want in a hospital, but also to use materials that are native to the area that offer warmth and a feeling of comfort,” said Lee. To achieve this, HRD used a combination of high-tech materials and design including metals, panels, and using clean lines in combination with stone walls, wood walls and very ‘earth-like materials,’” according to Lee. Much of the art in the hospital also comes from local artists and photographers.

The building is also designed and oriented to give patients beautiful views, according to Lee. “Creating a connection between the inside and the outdoors was a really important part of the design. There is so much natural light coming into the building, you don’t even need lights on most of the time,” said Lee. That said, 50 percent of the building’s light fixtures will be energy-efficient LED lighting, according to a statement.

To create a community feel, there is a large dining space called The Galleria with a large outdoor terrace space intended to be used by the public for community events, or simply to go out to lunch, according to Lee. “The new hospital will become a destination for the community to visit for pleasure in addition to going to the hospital when someone is sick. That’s something you don’t see every day,” said Lee. “This is what I personally enjoy about designing hospitals — helping people and giving the community something they can be proud of,” Lee said.

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The Kuwait Ministry of Public Works appointed SSH — one of the leading firms in building, design and construction in the Middle East — to provide design services for the hospital on a design-award-construct basis. Global architects HKS and global engineering firm WSP are also involved in the project. The 322,914-square-foot facility will be built in the Al Sabah Specialty Medical Area in Al Shuwaikh.

The design concept of this giant hospital project is said to be unique with its “futuristic hospital” design theme, according to a statement issued by SSH. The project incorporates advanced designs that include both state-of-the-art technology and energy conservation, according to an article by Trade Arabia. As the largest hospital of its kind, it will have enough space for 792 beds and 2,400 parking spaces. There will be a helipad to support emergency air transport services as well as a day-care center for children of staff members working at the hospital.

In addition to its functional design, one of the goals of the hospital project is to provide a welcoming, comfortable, stress-free and home-like environment for its patients and their families, according to SSH. The facility will also include diagnostic and treatment centers to complement all tertiary care services, along with other non-clinical support and public departments.

The post Design for World’s Largest Children’s Hospital Unveiled in Kuwait appeared first on HCO News.

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“This is a totally radical way of building a health care environment,” said Kristin Moore, director of health care for DIRTT. “It’s been really exciting for us to see how quickly this has been embraced by the health care community.”

DIRTT began offering interior health care solutions after realizing the need for inherent flexibility in medical facilities. After surveying health care stakeholders, DIRTT found the need for flexibility was being expressed again and again. Technology, patient populations and health care models are constantly evolving and changing, Moore said, DIRTT wanted to create a solution that could change with health care easily and efficiently.

“[Health care] environments need to be flexible because facilities really don’t know what they’ll be delivering and who they’re going to be delivering it to,” Moore said.

The construction of the prefabricated modular walls also saves time and is cost efficient. While typical health care construction requires a linear process, DIRTT changes the process of conventional construction.

“Typically, when you look at a conventional construction project, we start with that shell. The very first thing we do is we start erecting steel studs for the drywall construction, and the challenge with that is now every trade has to work around those vertical impediments, so it’s not a very efficient process to say the least,” Moore said.

Linear construction is a long and drawn-out process that may run into several obstacles. The clean and unitized construction of DIRTT interiors is a major benefit to already occupied health care facilities that need construction to be unobtrusive and fast, Moore said.

“For health care facilities, they need to get their doors open to start generating revenue and start responding to their patient population,” she said. “If we can compress and compact that construction schedule that’s a big benefit for a health care facility.”

The horizontal detail of DIRTT solutions can also incorporate the specific needs of the health care setting. DIRTT walls can support anything from iPod docking stations to handrails to artwork. These details can be changed in or out depending on the needs of the facility and do not need to be screwed into the wall.

“We have a non-marring approach where that bracket detail supports it,” Moore said. “So over time, facilities do not have to come in and patch and repair where those elements used to be.”

DIRTT also concentrates on reducing material wastes. Using ICE software, DIRTT minimizes the amount of materials brought into construction and reuses materials in the interior to be as clean and sustainable as possible. The highly sustainable design technology also identifies which elements of DIRTT interiors can be reused in future renovations.

“Instead of creating waste and, at best, diverting waste, we just don’t create waste in the first place,” Moore said.

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Indoor healing or therapeutic gardens are now blooming in hospitals, outpatient clinics, substance abuse facilities and hospice settings across the country. Where health care providers once relied on potted plants and landscaped entryways, many are now dedicating interiors to lush, living oases, and seeing some serious benefits.

Roger Ulrich, now an environmental psychologist at Texas A&M University, was one of the first to examine how integrating nature into health care settings could positively impact patients. Ulrich specifically studied patients recovering from gall bladder surgery. The only distinct difference in their treatment and recovery was the view from their hospital room. Ulrich found that patients who enjoyed a view of nature typically required less pain medication, experienced fewer complications and healed a full day faster than their counterparts who faced brick walls.

In 2008, researchers at Kansas State University published similar findings. They found that patients recovering from appendectomies in rooms containing plants and flowers required significantly fewer postoperative analgesics, and had more positive physiological responses when compared to patients in the flora-free control group.

Shane Pliska, president of the interior landscape design firm Planterra, enthusiastically supports these findings. Pliska and the Planterra team have completed multiple garden installations in health care facilities across the country, and believe their work has an important impact on physical and psychological health.

“We need plants,” Pliska said. “People are stressed in medical facilities, whether it’s because of their own illness or a loved one’s [illness]. When they have nature in sight, when there are plants in those spaces, it makes people feel more comfortable. It relates to the human element of what we’re doing.”

In 2012, Scientific American magazine also noted the increased use of healing gardens in hospitals and clinics, referencing design standards developed by Susan Rodiek, also of Texas A&M. According to Rodiek, lush, layered and diverse garden installations with a minimum of concrete interruptions are most conducive to healing and engagement. The gardens should also stimulate multiple senses, be easily accessible and feature realistic sculptures as opposed to abstract images.

These living green spaces can be integrated into nearly any hospital or clinical setting. Many facilities concentrate healing gardens in atriums or entryways; however seating areas, collaborative spaces and corridors can also serve as ideal venues for containerized installations. According to Pliska, Planterra designers have even converted defunct interior fountains into lush gardens.

Living installations are also a safe option for sterile environments. Planterra and other interior garden designers often use a sub-irrigation system and sterilized growing media as opposed to traditional soil. This prevents water from being exposed to air. Meanwhile, the plants add to the overall air quality of the space by creating new oxygen rather than simply filtering it.

For example, at Planterra’s Henry Ford Hospital installation in West Bloomfield, Mich., two plant-filled atriums act as the facility’s lungs. Together they include roughly 2,500 live, oxygen-generating plants, which can be easily viewed from numerous patient rooms. The atriums also serve as important gathering spaces for large or small groups, offering more intimate conversation and reflection spaces.

Henry Ford Hospital President and CEO Gerard Van Grinsven also considers the garden an important extension of the hospital’s mission. “Even in the offseason time, our community can come here and be connected to nature, and really take advantage of its healing effects,” he said.

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