SEATTLE—DLR Group CEO Griff Davenport, FAIA, recently announced Seattle-based healthcare design firm Salus Architecture is joining DLR Group. Salus is exclusively dedicated to healthcare design, specializing in design of complex acute and ambulatory care facilities.

Salus was founded in 2014 by R David Frum, FAIA, FACHA; together with Dale Anderson, AIA, EDAC; and Douglas McNutt, AIA. Salus will operate its healthcare practice as DLR Group | Salus and continue to serve the needs of healthcare clients in the Pacific Northwest. It also will actively collaborate with DLR Group’s Healthcare studio to expand the array of specialty design services for the firm’s Healthcare clients. The Salus team will relocate to DLR Group’s office at 51 University Street this summer.

“DLR Group is committed to being a global design leader. The team at Salus is curious, collaborative, and focused on design and delivery of user-centered environments which aligns with our brand promise to elevate the human experience through design,” said Davenport. “The diversity of its staff will add to the design culture in our Seattle office and enhance the depth of expertise in our Healthcare sector across the nation.”

Salus provides a proven foundation for DLR Group to build a Healthcare practice in the Pacific Northwest. By joining DLR Group, Salus project teams have access to in-house design services including engineering, interiors, laboratory planning, lighting, and acoustics to expand the services available to existing clients.

DLR Group is a 100 percent employee-owned firm, and every Salus Architecture design professional will have the opportunity to purchase stock and invest in the future of DLR Group.

DLR Group is an integrated design firm delivering architecture, engineering, interiors, planning, and building optimization for new construction, renovation, and adaptive reuse.

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NEW YORK and SEATTLE—Building firm Abbott Construction, based in Seattle and Los Angeles, has merged operations with the STO Building Group, officially joining the STO umbrella organization, whose operations are based closer to the eastern seaboard.

Bringing Abbott into STO Building Group will allow STO to increase its reach on the West Coast as well as increase its holdings in the healthcare field.  Previous companies that joined up with STO include healthcare builders Layton Construction and LF Driscoll.

Abbott’s previous healthcare projects include the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital and University of Puget Sound Welcome Center in Tacoma, Washington, the Arcadia Mental Health Center in Arcadia, California, the Roy and Patricia Disney Cancer Center in Burbank, California, and the Healthpoint Midway Clinic in Des Moines, Iowa.

Troy Stedman, president and CEO of Abbott, said he believes merging operations with STO will allow for greater client satisfaction as well as helping his company increase its presence in the decades to come.

“We know from first-hand experience working together that our companies value integrity, collaboration, and a client-first way of doing business, so formally joining forces makes perfect sense,” Stedman said.

His sentiments were echoed by STO Building Group CEO Robert Mullen, who said Abbott’s West Coast foothold will become a great asset to the merged operations.

“By joining forces, both firms can leverage each other’s geographic reach and take advantage of each other’s strengths, relationships, geographies, and resources to better serve our clients across the globe,” Mullen said.

Despite coming into the STO fold, Abbott will continue to operate as an independent entity and retain its top leadership.  This jibes with STO’s ethos, which is to allow its constituent partners room to grow on their own while contributing to the greater good of the larger entity.

Other American companies that have joined with the STO organization include Ajax Building Company and BCCI Construction.

“The opportunity to merge with such an incredible firm as Abbott is exactly why we shifted our structure to STO Building Group,” James Donaghy, STO Building Group executive chairman, said recently.  “We value the reputation and heritage of the firms who merge with our organization, and each has kept its identity as a way to honor that legacy.

“As we continue to grow, we want to respect that history, but also reflect the collective expertise our companies offer and allow our employees to benefit from the larger organization’s resources.”

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SEATTLE. Tech giant Microsoft has announced that it is joining forces with hospital operator Providence St. Joseph Health on what the two companies are humbly calling the “hospital of the future,” according to CNBC.

Rather than construct an entirely new facility from the ground up, Providence St. Joseph CEO Rod Hochman said his firm will work in concert with Microsoft to adapt an existing facility near Microsoft’s headquarters. CNBC reports that the strategic partnership is aimed at improving electronic medical recordkeeping in such a way that healthcare professionals will be better able to access information and share it with one another as well.

Futuristic ideas touted include machines that will be able to process speech and also help clinicians to more quickly diagnose patient problems and speed up treatment options. Furthermore, the technological component will allow clinicians to better monitor patients after they have been discharged from the hospital setting. Having a strong database is vital for this purpose, and a qualification in database fundamentals goes a long way in our technology driven world. Fortunately, people can take things like the 98-364 practice test online, in order to prepare them for getting the certification. This is ever more important because virtually every type of company will require some kind of database that will need effective management, especially businesses in healthcare.

Microsoft has previously tried to make inroads into the healthcare market in the previous decade, but its ventures, including a hospital software called Amalga, didn’t pan out for the company founded by Bill Gates. Microsoft elected not to pursue much else in the way of healthcare in the last decade after the problem with Amalga, but their luck may change in this new joint venture with Providence, which operates hospitals in seven states and is looking to increase its digital presence.

Microsoft’s partnership with Providence will also enable the healthcare provider to move many of its records from several data centers into a single cloud database, reported Yahoo Finance. The initial partnership is slated to last for five years.

Ultimately, there is no denying that cloud technology has come a long way in recent years. With this in mind, Microsoft certifications such as the ms-900 exam have also soared in popularity. More IT are professionals seeking out Microsoft 365 qualifications than ever before as well. Consequently, it will be interesting to see how the healthcare industry benefits from adopting cloud services, so find tools to help with Active Directory monitoring, or Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud models in the future.

Providence St. Joseph Health is a national nonprofit Catholic healthcare system with 120,000 employees at sites across six states, including Washington. The company saw operating revenues of $24.4 billion in 2018, according to Becker’s Hospital CFO Report.

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COUPEVILLE, Wash. — The WhidbeyHealth Medical Center expansion in Coupeville is now 75 percent complete. The $50 million project began in September of 2015 and is slated for completion in early Oct. 2017.

The two-story, 60,000-square-foot project was designed by the Seattle office of HDR Architects and Engineering, with Andersen Construction (also in Seattle) serving as the general contractor, with George Senerth, director of facilities and plant engineering at WhidbeyHealth directing the project. Marc Estvold, an Anacortes architect, has been hired as a contract project manager on the project.

The new expansion will include 39 rooms for inpatients, observation and labor and delivery, according to Craig Holt, project executive at Andersen Construction. All patient rooms are single occupancy and are located at the perimeter of the building allowing natural light to enter the rooms while maintaining privacy, according to Holt. The previous patient rooms were 210 square feet, with the new single-patient rooms measuring at 280 square feet. Labor and delivery suites will also be larger at 392 square feet and 87-square-foot bathrooms, with large white soaking tubs. The new patient rooms will be large enough to include high-tech medical equipment and will include a private bathroom for each, with almost every room with a motorized lift above the bed.

The new wing is being constructed with smooth, non-porous walls and floors, increased hands-free sinks, and more airborne infection isolation rooms in an effort towards more infection-control. Instead of a large centralized desk as in the past, small work stations have been installed in the hallways directly outside patient doors to decrease time spent going back and forth. There is also a “nurse server” pass-through slot on patient doors, so supplies can be delivered to patients in a way that will offer the patients more privacy and rest. “Patients can expect a more healing environment when the medical center’s new wing opens in late spring,” said Geri Forbes, chief executive officer at WhidbeyHealth in a recent statement.

Each room has a “family zone,” with cushioned benches with cushions to provide seating and a place for a visitor to sleep overnight, and have been designed and standardized to have beds, cabinets and supplies all located in the same places to improve nurse and physician efficiency. The expansion is intended to upgrade overall patient services, and improve efficiency for hospital staff, according to Estvold in a recent statement.

“Great effort has been taken by the leadership of the hospital to include input from the entire team to guide the design and end use of the new space,” said Holt. The addition is two levels with the bottom level open for future expansion and the upper level for full use as patient rooms and supporting services, according to Holt.

The new wing will also be more energy-efficient with a lighting system that emulates the natural light from outside. Additionally, a variable refrigerant flow heat pump system is being installed by Coffman Engineers in Seattle, consultant to HDR Architecture on the project. The pump system will reduce the hospital’s energy use by 40 percent annually, and the combination of these sustainability measures will cut hospital energy costs by one third, according to Duncan Griffin, sustainable principal at HDR.

The hospital will receive an energy rebate from Puget Sound Energy in Bellevue, according to Griffin. Additionally, students with the University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab in Seattle are tracking the project to gauge energy savings. “It’s been a goal for a long time to bring hospital energy performance to a more reasonable level,” said Griffin. “Hospitals are huge consumers of energy which can have a negative impact on the community. With the installation of good solar shading and a high efficiency mechanical system, we can achieve this, and conserve community resources in doing so.”

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