Providence Regional Opens New Medical Tower in Washington State

EVERETT, Wash. — Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett recently opened its new, $460 million, state-of-the-art medical tower to the public, the largest and most comprehensive building project in the hospital’s 150-year history.

 

The 12-story, 680,000-square-foot Marshall and Katherine Cymbaluk Medical Tower at the medical center’s Colby Campus, is one of the largest private investment projects in Snohomish County and will serve as the centerpiece of the hospital’s comprehensive plan to continue serving the healthcare needs of the growing community.

 

ZGF Architects served as the architect and interior designer, Mortensen Construction as the general contractor, Magnusson Klemencic Associates as the structural/civil engineer, CDi Engineers as the mechanical engineer and Sparling as the electrical/IT/acoustic engineer on the project. Candela provided the lighting, SiteWorkshop provided the landscaping, Anderson Krygier Inc. provided the graphics and Lerch Bates provided vertical transportation, while Rolf Jensen acted as the code consultant.

 

According to Providence CEO David Brooks, the new tower was designed around Providence’s patient- and family-centered care philosophy, with comfort, privacy and convenience in mind. “By combining cutting-edge technology with patient-centric care, Providence aims to set a new standard for the way patients and their families experience hospital care in America,” said Brooks.

 

The new acute care tower expands hospital services within a rapidly growing region and consolidates the largest emergency department service in the state of Washington into one facility. The facility includes 328 patient rooms for acute, critical and surgical care, a parking structure, central plant, significant site, street and utility improvements and an updated campus master plan.

 

The tower features $60 million in the latest medical equipment and is designed to adapt to technology as it evolves in the future. It dedicates an entire floor larger than an NFL football field to emergency services, and includes 79 private treatment rooms and four trauma rooms. CT and X-ray services are also located within the department to provide quick access to imaging capabilities.

 

More than $20 million in diagnostic imaging equipment, including two MRI scanning machines and four CT scanners, are housed on the diagnostic imaging floor. The department has a unique design that will accommodate both inpatient and outpatient imaging needs, and electronic medical records allow doctors and staff from multiple organizations to share information in real time, speeding up diagnosis and treatment.

 

By working closely with users, including key service line leaders, hospital staff and other stakeholders through a series of workshops, Providence decided to merge three key hospital functions – surgery, interventional radiology and catheterization laboratories – into a progressive Hybrid OR service.

 

Two floors of the tower are dedicated to surgical and interventional procedures and two floors house 48 patient rooms for intensive care, which include six dialysis stations. Each of the top three floors has 56 patient rooms for medical or post-surgical patients.

 

Providence also worked closely with its Patient and Family Advisory Council when designing the tower and, as a result, incorporated several elements not typically found in hospitals. Most rooms have a special “family zone” area, complete with a sleeper sofa and storage area so that a patient’s family members may stay with them.

 

The tower was designed to create a calming, healing environment for patients, family members and visitors. The building brings nature and the outdoors inside, with features such as a two-story atrium lobby, patient rooms with sweeping views on all sides of the building and a rooftop viewing garden with native plants, grasses and trees. It also features family lounges with Internet access, and the surgery waiting areas provide a kitchen, playroom and resource center.

 

The planning and design of the healing environment centered around the concept of providing a highly sustainable, light filled, patient-centered care setting, while identifying opportunities to consolidate similar functions, improve adjacencies of interdependent departments and simplify processes and procedures such as staff, patient and material flow to provide maximum efficiency and flexibility, according to the design team. 

 

Located within a single-family residential neighborhood, the design process involved working collaboratively with residents, city officials, and key stakeholders to address concerns about placement, size, scale and the architectural character of the tower, central plant and parking structure. This resulted in smaller footprints and buffer zones with landscaped treatments to preserve view corridors, as well as modern forms such as glass and metal panels combined with traditional materials such as brick and wood. 

 

Providence Regional Medical Center Everett is a tertiary referral center serving five counties with comprehensive, nonprofit, mission-based health care. In addition to cardiac services, critical care and vascular care, Providence offers general medical and surgical care, and specialized treatment in areas such as oncology, newborn intensive care, orthopedics, neurosurgery, trauma and pediatrics. The hospital operates two campuses in Everett.