Based in Indianapolis, the company has served 115 health care facilities and managed business in 15 states since 2013. The goal of Medxcel FM is to offer facility management solutions that help hospitals operate in the safest and most-effective way possible.

“In perfecting our service platform, we have proven that effective facilities management and maintenance is crucial to keeping overall costs down and to ensuring an overall safe health care environment,” said Michael Argir, president of Medxcel FM, in a statement.

Medxcel FM provides a cost-driven analysis of how hospitals can improve. With the patient experience at the forefront of its mind, Medxcel FM helps hospitals make decisions that improve the quality of care as well as the services provided without cutting corners.

“One key component to our model is our insourcing strategy, which brings talent back into our customer’s organizations, providing the skilled personnel and ongoing training necessary to self-perform many of the outsourced services,” Argir said in a statement.

Medxcel FM creates service strategies that manage hospital operations as well as facilities that exist off-site, such as office buildings, clinics and ambulatory surgery centers. In the ever-evolving world of health care facilities management, Medxcel FM can help hospitals expand while keeping costs in check.

“We are leading the transformation of health care facilities management by offering a new way for hospitals to do business more efficiently and effectively,” Argir said in a statement.

By spearheading a transformation in health care, Medxcel FM’s service platform will only inspire more change while encouraging health care facilities to grow in the right direction.

The post Medxcel Makes Service Platform Available to Public appeared first on HCO News.

Safety is another critical patient consideration – especially fire safety. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), thousands of fires occur in U.S. health care facilities each year. For example, between 2006 and 2010, the NFPA reports U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 6,240 structure fires in or on health care properties per year. Designing patient spaces for optimal fire safety is therefore essential, and using such companies as Statcomm Inc. to get the right fire safety equipment is key. However, for health care building teams, this can prove challenging in areas requiring adjustable patient privacy.

Curtains and blinds most frequently control vision and privacy levels in health care settings. However, curtains cannot be adjusted for partial visibility, and blinds leave visual gaps and are further prone to misalignment. In addition, neither solution provides any mitigation against potential fire hazards. To help resolve this dilemma, building teams are increasingly seeking patient privacy solutions with readily adjustable privacy controls and competent fire-retardant capabilities.

Privacy Control Solutions

While architects have many adjustable privacy control solutions at their disposal, very few meet the following fire, life safety and privacy requirements present in hospitals.

Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act of 1996 (HIPAA) regulations apply not just to the protection of personal health records and information, but also to visual and acoustic privacy. In terms of facility design, workstations need to consider the visual privacy of print and digital patient medical information. Patient accommodations, operating and examination rooms need to account for acoustic and visual privacy.

Adjustable vision control is key to managing a patient’s privacy. It is imperative windows and doors provide adjustable visibility and privacy levels that allow for discreet or full observation by health care personnel, while still preventing patients from feeling observed and exposed. When necessary, such privacy controls should also allow for complete blocking of light and vision.

Hygiene is critical to any health care environment. From a design perspective, this entails products with easy-to-clean finishes and features, free of crevices and joints that can accumulate dust and dirt and pose barriers to effective cleaning. While curtains and blinds can provide some privacy, they are far from ideal in terms of hygiene and maintenance.

Compartmentation, or the use of fire-rated materials to sub-divide spaces, is an effective design technique for helping contain the spread of fire and smoke. According to the NFPA 1994 Life Safety Code Handbook (section 6-1.1.1), “lack of compartmentation and rapid fire development have been primary factors in numerous multiple-fatality fires.” Given the importance of compartmentation, applicable building codes, such as the 2012 International Building Code (IBC), set out provisions for fire-rated materials. In many modern health care facility designs, fire-rated glazing is one specialty material used to satisfy stringent building codes in a patient-focused manner, meeting other goals such as improving occupant well-being with access to natural light.

Developing an Optimal Solution

When considering all the factors and building guidelines, an optimal solution for patient privacy, hygiene and safety combines adjustable louvers within fire-rated glass. For example, Unicel Architectural and Technical Glass Products (TGP) partnered to combine Unicel’s Vision Control louvers-in-glass with Pilkington Pyrostop fire-rated glass from TGP – the first such product assembly to be classified and labeled with Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and provide fire-ratings up to 90 minutes.

By combining hermetically sealed, adjustable louvers within fire-resistant glazing, this type of solution can address both safety and privacy concerns and can further provide the following advantages:

• Design flexibility: Such clear fire-rated glazing systems resemble ordinary window glass, greatly expanding design flexibility in areas required to provide protection from the scorching heat of building fires.

• Customizable: The sealed glass unit combining louvers within glass can typically be customized to virtually any shape for interior or exterior hospital glazing applications.

• Safety: The fire-rated and impact safety-rated glazing material blocks radiant heat, helping protect people and valuables on the non-fire side of the glass where heat transfer might be a concern.

• Hygiene: The louvers are hermetically sealed for optimal hygiene conditions.

• Vision control: The louvers offer completely adjustable privacy – 80 percent visibility when opened and 100 percent blocking when closed.

• Sound control: The louvers-within-glass product assembly offers sound wave barriers on par with concrete blocks for tranquility in any setting.

In Application – Glendale Adventist Medical Center

The Glendale Adventist Medical Center’s (GAMC) new 35,000-square-foot West Tower III includes seven stories for expanded patient care and encompasses leading-edge approaches to patient technology, comfort, convenience and safety. To help ensure patient safety and privacy, project architects had stringent requirements for privacy controls on interior windows and doors to be hygienic, adjustable, easy-to-operate and fire-resistant per UL fire-rating standards. They selected Vision Control integrated louvers combined with Pilkington Pyrostop glazing to give GAMC patients the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their privacy solution is protected by glazing with enhanced fire-resistant capabilities.

A total of 40 Pilkington Pyrostop/Vision Control units with double crank handles were installed in interior locations on the third and fourth floors using 45-minute fire-resistance-rated glazing on both sides of the units. The combined Vision Control and Pilkington Pyrostop glazing assembly has been classified and labeled with UL for doors, windows, transoms and sidelights.

Co-authors:
Jeff Razwick is the president of Technical Glass Products (TGP), a supplier of fire-rated glass and framing systems, and other specialty architectural glazing.

Jean-Francois Couturier is the president and CEO of Unicel Architectural located in Montreal, Quebec. Under his leadership, Unicel has successfully built a global brand for high-end aluminum and glazing solutions that help control sunlight, heat, sound and visibility.
 

The post Combining Privacy & Safety in Health Care Design appeared first on HCO News.

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.

The post Healthy Hospitals Bring the Outdoors Inside appeared first on HCO News.

Conducted at the Fall 2011 Healthcare Design Conference in Nashville, Tenn., the survey questioned more than 300 conference attendees. Mortenson sponsored the event’s cyber café and surveyed attendees as they logged in to use the computers. Participants included health care administrators and facilities managers, architects, builders and suppliers.

“The challenge in doing these types of surveys is getting a lot of responses, and I think we finally hit on methodology here,” said Steve Pekala, Mortenson’s manager of market intelligence. “This is a way that lets you get a lot of responses from the exact kind of people that you want to talk to.”

The survey found that despite the state of the economy, 75 percent of respondents expect their organization’s construction activity to increase over the next 12 to 24 months. Additionally, 70 percent of health care institution respondents said their organizations are pursuing LEED or other sustainability certifications on new projects.

Key highlights of the survey also included responses to evidence-based design (EBD) questions, where 87 percent of respondents said EBD’s popularity was growing within their organization, half saying it is an integral component of their institutions work. However, Pekala notes that owners had a bit more faith in EBD than the architects did.

“Maybe its just because the architects are a little closer to it and work with it more on a day-to-day basis and they see more of the limitation in it, but most owners felt like there was plenty of evidence out there to allow evidence-based design to be broadly utilized, but most of the architects didn’t see that,” said Pekala. “And then most of the architects said that the uniqueness of health care projects really limit where evidence-based design can be applied, but the owners didn’t see it that way.”

Architects and owners also differed when it comes to alternative delivery, with architects noticing a growing interest in alternative delivery interest but owners seeing things differently.

“This is an industry that is in kind of a tough spot. They are worried about healthcare legislation. They are worried that reimbursements from the government are going to go down. Medicaid, they think, is badly broken and urgently needs to be fixed. But then, at the same time, they are very optimistic about the future. They are very optimistic in their own ability. They are optimistic that they will be able to pick themselves up and face these problems head on,” said Pekala. “I thought that was kind of interesting; we got lot of negative answers to questions about the state of the industry, but then I got this huge optimism about the future.”

To download the survey results visit http://www.mortenson.com/resources.aspx and click on Healthcare Industry and Design Trends, Jan. 27, 2012.

Mortenson began conducting these types of surveys at trade shows within the past year and has completed surveys on mission critical/data centers, education, solar energy and wind energy. Studies on building in China and on stadium building will take place within the next couple of months.

The company is the second-largest owner of wind farms in the country and one of the top builders of utility-scale solar, says Pekala. Renewable energy comprises about one-third of Mortenson’s business and the rest is traditional commercial, including a lot of healthcare, higher education and mission critical facilities.

The post Health Care Construction Expected to Increase appeared first on HCO News.