CLEVELAND – The MetroHealth system has announced plans to create a new 11-story Acute Care Hospital on its 52-acre Cleveland campus along with national multidisciplinary design firm HGA.

The hospital is a part of MetroHealth’s forward-thinking response to confront the rapid changes in improving patient care, streamlining staff efficiencies and enhancing community partnerships. Beginning construction this year, the hospital will include private patient rooms featuring floor-to-ceiling windows as well as accommodations for overnight family visits and the flexibility to incorporate ICU capabilities.

The facility’s master plan also uncovers a “hospital in a park,” in which 25 acres of the previous surface parking will be changed into a park-like space for patients, visitors and staff to be able to receive the natural benefits of nature.

“The hospital becomes a backdrop for the landscape and a showcase of the community activities within. Every occupied space within the facility is given access to natural daylight,” said HGA Project Designer, Bryce Hubertz, AIA LEED AP. “Corridors terminate at floor-to-ceiling windows providing orientation and views to the site including long views of downtown Cleveland.”

The hospital incorporates the characteristics and distinctions of a park  –  including textures, shadows, social opportunities – which have been abstracted to form moments within the facility that are welcoming, memorable and affirming.

Hubertz explained how the facades at the patient tower reflect the always changing patterns of the sky with extruded terracotta facades, mimicking the rippling waves of Lake Erie and nearby Cuyahoga River.

“Wooden walls and detailing flow from interior spaces outward, blurring the line between indoor and out, said Hubertz. “The guiding ambition is to connect the patient directly to the benefits of the proximity of the natural environment. The overall composition is a balance of sophistication and informality, using material to evoke the familiar, with an emphasis on grounding the structure within its context and community.”

HGA medical planner, Mara Sabatini, NCIDQ, IIDA stated that the new hospital will also feature robotics to deploy supplies, medication and food to the rooms creating greater efficiency for the staff as well as better patient care.

“Along with the robotics, we have a pneumatic tubes system across all departments for waste and linens and other material transport,” said Sabatini. “HGA is working closely with our design partners Guide Studio to integrate pieces of technology-based wayfinding into the new addition as well.”

The design process of the hospital includes MetroHealth’s in-house Lean team which continues to research new operational processes and delivery methods to respond to patients’ various needs.

With HGA, the team developed a research-focused I-Team to find and address the best practices to achieve the health system’s promise to design a cost-effective, sustainable and patient-focused hospital.

Through concentrated predesign workshops, the team observed innovations in the best utilization of space in order to quickly adapt rooms to new delivery methods and processes, creating a highly flexible, neutral platform.

The outcome of this was a Process Neutral Design which emphasizes design that uses assembled rather than constructed parts, including modular and open plans, prefabricated components, demountable systems and transferable walls to establish its neutral and flexible platform for quickly responding to patient needs.

The hospital is scheduled for completion in 2022.

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CLEVELAND — We all recognize that hospitals are designed to help heal patients; but what if they could also be designed to help heal communities? This is the question MetroHealth is attempting to answer with the unveiling of its latest hospital transformation plan.

MetroHealth has begun a nearly $800 million project with Minneapolis-based HGA Architecture, converting half of the county health system’s main campus on West 25^th Street into open green space with connections to the nearby Towpath Trail and other amenities. With this connective design, MetroHealth aims to bolster community wellness as the hospital becomes a major open and active space that can be used by everyone for activity to promote health and community engagement.

With only one to two acres of green space on the campus, this transformation will ultimately transform 25 acres of the 52-acre campus into green space, with the designs’ bottom-line ensuring the makeover of a gray and crowded campus into what they are calling a “hospital in a park.”

Hospital in a Park

The key features of this transformation plan include the installment of a roughly six- to eight-acre park along West 25^th Street, west of Scranton Road and south of MetroHealth Drive, with the space now occupied by the fortress-like Outpatient Plaza, a garage and treatment facility built in 1992. With a new hospital bed tower situated on the southern edge of the campus, MetroHealth would build a new Ambulatory Care Center and an extensive MetroHealth Wellness Gardens.

The MetroHealth Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Center, a nursing home built in 2000 that now inhabits the future site of the wellness gardens, would be removed and replaced by a new tower on the north side of the campus at West 25^th Street and Sackett Avenue. The northeast corner of the campus, now dominated by surface parking, would also become a collection of park-like spaces, with covered parking and indoor walkways making it so patients and visitors will not have to walk outside. The new layout reduces patient and visitor walking distance by 40 percent and eliminates almost all surface parking, according to a statement. Walkways throughout the campus will also include a looped path connected to the Towpath trail.

“We are creating schematic designs right now, and one of our key features is the way we’re creating ‘process neutral design’ that makes the building flexible and adaptable for the future,” said Walter Jones, MetroHealth’s senior vice president of campus transformation. “We know from research- and evidence-based design that views and access to open space and nature is beneficial for patient recovery and recuperation.”

Jones also explained that the implementation of “process neutral design” allows the creation of systems that will be adaptive, efficient and effective when the main campus opens, and for many years thereafter. In return, this design will not only beautify the campus with its trail connection and expanded green acreage, but it will also extend its benefits to surrounding neighbors.

“We’ll be able to incorporate therapies and arts in medicine programming into patients’ healing regimens. The health benefits aren’t just for patients. They’ll extend to anyone who lives, works and plays nearby,” said Jones.

This project plays a role in MetroHealth’s effort to strengthen its West 25^th neighborhood, including forming the CCH Development Corp. and an effort to turn the neighborhood into the world’s first hospital led, EcoDistrict, according to a statement. MetroHealth believes that its campus updates will not only improve care but could spur revitalization in Cleveland as well, CEO Akram Boutros, M.D., told a local newspaper.

“We’re committed to making this a community to be enjoyed by its current residents, but also we have to be committed to bringing new people in,” Boutrous said. “Otherwise this neighborhood is not sustainable as it is with so many vacant and underutilized properties.”

Construction has already begun and is expected to be completed by 2022.

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