NAVARRE, Fla.—Baptist Health Care has partnered with the Texas-based healthcare firm Intuitive Health on a facility they are aiming to unveil this month in the Florida Panhandle, the joint partnership announced recently.

The Baptist Health Care Emergency Room & Urgent Care, located at the Baptist Medical Park in the Pensacola suburb of Navarre, is scheduled to open for business on September 28. This will be the first “hybrid” emergency room and urgent care clinic to operate in Northwest Florida.

Intuitive says that the advantage of a hybrid medical care model is that it simplifies how patients are assessed and then directed toward necessary treatments. Board-certified, ER-licensed physicians determine a course of treatment, be it emergency or urgent care. At the same time, the paradigm streamlines costs and reduces patient fees as ER visits are typically more expensive than urgent care-billed care.

“We’ve witnessed a growing issue across Northwest Florida surrounding trying to guide consumers to the appropriate level of care,” Brett Aldridge, vice president of business development at Baptist Health Care, said in a statement. “Requiring patients to determine the level of care they require by choosing either a freestanding ER or urgent care is neither feasible nor safe.

“Through our partnership with Intuitive Health, Baptist Health Care is eliminating the guesswork and improving patient experience with a full-service emergency room and urgent care under one roof.”

Intuitive has worked on these hybrid concept facilities in the past, and stocks each with a radiology suite, CT scanners and other important gear.

Added Thom Herrmann, CEO of Intuitive Health: “In addition to receiving the highest-quality of care, patients want convenience, immediate access to care, better customer service and greater transparency in the billing process. Partnering with Baptist Health Care to bring our dual urgent care and emergency care clinics to Pensacola is an exciting step toward making high-quality and transparent patient care more accessible nationwide.”

Baptist Health Care, which is based in the greater Pensacola area, is part of the Mayo Clinic Care Network. Their system encompasses three hospitals, four medical parks as well as the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedic & Sports Medicine and the Lakeview Center. The firm employs more than 7,000 people, making them one of the largest employers in the Florida Panhandle.

Their partner in the venture, Intuitive Health, has 10 locations in Texas, New Mexico and Indiana. The Baptist Health Care Emergency Room & Urgent Care will be Intuitive Health’s eleventh hybrid emergency room/urgent care facility in the nation and the fourth such facility in Florida.

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AUSTIN, Texas — SmithGroupJJR announced the opening of its newly designed, Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office, in Austin, Texas on Jan. 22, 2018. The $28 million building is 52,000-square-feet and stands three times larger than the prior facility, with a design striving to bring public awareness to forensic sciences, featuring the latest technological advancements in the industry with flexibility for future changes, as well as environmental consciousness, all inside a premier work environment.

SmithGroupJJR created a design to help provide for advanced investigation, morgue, autopsy, and laboratory spaces. Having only three autopsy stations at the previous location, this modern, two-story building holds a total of nine autopsy stations, a significant increase which is expected to allow the forensic team to effectively manage their caseloads.

“This new state-of-the-art facility allows us to use the most advanced technologies and efficient processes to provide high-quality medicolegal death investigation,” J. Keith Pinckard, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Examiner for Travis County said in a statement.

In addition to the function and workflow improvements, SmithGroupJJR’s design delivers a civic building which bears an iconic presence and a robust, urban edge on the street. A prominent front door greets families and visitors, while staff has their own secure front door, a shaded terrace, and garden outside of an investigations suite. The staff also benefit from the interior design with plentiful natural light and open space, with views of the surrounding outdoor landscape.

“Nine times out of ten, medical examiner offices are unfortunately in dark and windowless, fortress-like buildings.  For Travis County’s new facility, we wanted employees to have an ideal, highly secure, world-class work environment while the building enhances Austin’s street life and embraces high-performance, green design,” said SmithGroupJJR Design Director Mark Kranz, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C, who served as design principal for the project.

Added Kranz, “When a building’s design accomplishes these goals, it naturally becomes a representative of community pride.  In this case, we’re confident the new building will bring positive public awareness to forensic science. We feel the new Travis County Medical Examiner’s office will elevate the expectation of what a forensic facility can and should be.”

The new office comes with the latest advances in technology and is one of only a few medical examiner’s offices in North America to have a computed tomography (CT) scanner. This gives pathologists the option to conduct a CT scan to either augment or in some cases, even supplant an autopsy. Other new features include larger labs for the office’s toxicology group and five observation decks above the autopsy rooms.  Visiting families are also provided with their own private waiting rooms.

An important aspect taken into consideration while creating the ideal Medical Examiner’s office was designing a flexibly functioning building, with the ability to adjust to the ever-changing needs of space and technology. Travis County anticipates a 40 percent population growth in the next 30 years, which is expected to result in a need for higher capacity.

Travis County Medical Examiner Office Adapts for Forensic Scientists

“The building is designed to adapt with the changing needs of its forensic scientists, doing so without slowing down their work,” said SmithGroupJJR Director of Laboratory Planning Adam Denmark, AIA, LEED AP BD+C.

For example, lab benches, and instrumentation are mobile and can be reconfigured as casework needs change. Storage capacity in the morgue can double by changing the storage strategy. A combined receiving and releasing body cooler space with a moveable barrier can adjust with capacity needs.

The building is not only finding ways to sustain operations throughout evolved technology, but it also aims to sustain environmental protections, targeting its LEED Silver certification. According to a statement, to support the county’s sustainability initiatives, progressive energy and water conservation strategies were incorporated into SmithGroupJJR’s holistic design.

Other green design features include highly efficient mechanical and electrical systems that will minimize energy usage such as LED lighting and daylight harvesting controls, air handling units that serve both office and laboratory zones allowing outside air to ventilate the laboratories, and laminar flow diffusers in autopsy spaces to increase effectiveness and reduce airflow.

The Travis County Medical Examiner’s new office is located at 7723 Springdale Road, Austin, in east Travis County. The old office at 1213 Sabine Street in downtown Austin is being renovated into the Austin-Travis County Sobriety Center.

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LONGMONT, Colo. — UCHealth in Denver is slated to complete construction on the new Longs Peak hospital in Longmont this June. The new hospital will address the healthcare needs of the surrounding and fast-growing populations north and east of Longmont including Niwot, Firestone, Erie, Frederick and Dacono that currently must travel elsewhere to receive care.

This 210,000-square-foot building includes the Longs Peak Hospital and the UCHealth Longs Peak Surgery Center, with a budget of $190 million. The architect on the project is WHR Architects out of Dallas, Texas, and the general contractor is Haselden Construction out of Denver. The new hospital will have 51 inpatient beds with room for 50 more with approximately 80,000 square feet of shelled space for future inpatient needs, according to Dan Robinson, chief executive officer of the new UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital.

The hospital waiting areas on all three floors open to a bright and sunny atrium with 73 feet of glass. All of the stairways are surrounded by windows bringing in natural light, which will encourage people —patients, physicians, visitors and more — to take the stairs instead of the elevators, according to Robinson. All of the post partum rooms have large windows with views of Long’s Peak, and many of the other patient rooms face west, bringing in lots of light. “The orientation of the rooms and the large windows makes the patient rooms warm, inviting and family-friendly,” said Robinson.

The hospital’s architecture uses regional stone and wood building products to maintain a local feel, according to Tushar Gupta, lead designer at WHR Architects. “WHR’s design team is proud to collaborate with UCHealth to create an innovative, welcoming and healing environment for the community,” said Gupta, in a recent statement. “The design establishes a strong visual identity, in distinctive form and native materiality, that will be part of UCHealth’s new facilities throughout the region going forward,” Gupta said.

The entire hospital structure is being built to LEED standards with the use of sustainable building materials, and prefab construction was employed for the project, according to Robinson. “The use of prefab construction was an effort on our part to increase the timeline of the hospital construction, and also to be environmentally responsible,” Robinson said.

The hospital will have an intensive care unit, a level III trauma center and emergency department, and advanced cardiac services. It will have a birthing center with a level II special care nursery, and a heliport for emergency transfers to other acute-care hospitals. There will be lab and imaging services, and a 24 hours a day seven day a week retail pharmacy. Additionally, the hospital will offer premie care, and will provide endoscopic ultrasound amongst other advanced services.

A unique trait of this hospital is a new technology for health care: innovative telehealth services, for internal and external communication. UCHealth is installing a technology for internal communication called “Vocera” which allows physicians, nurses and caregivers to communicate directly with each other without the constant noise and interruption of an overhead paging system.

Additionally, a wireless IT platform called “DocLine” will enable the hospital to communicate with other doctors and facilities outside of the Hospital. Physicians will be able to gain realtime consult from specialists via video telecommunication so that patients, doctors and the outside specialists can have consult right in the patient room. “If our beds are full and we need to admit a patient, we can automatically call the DocLine for the nearest hospital available,” Robinson said. DocLine also has the ability to dispatch ambulances based on the needs of the patient and based on the request of the referring physician, according to Robinson.

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