To be built in the Carnes Crossroads area, the new Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital will have 50 beds and cost approximately $113 million. The 140,000-square-foot facility will include obstetrics, physical therapy, infusion therapy, radiology and imaging services, a 24-hour emergency department and pharmacy. A medical office building will also be built on the 90-acre campus to better accommodate the way patients access health care.

“Roper St. Francis selected HDR for its high level of design creativity, depth in evidence-based practice, strong engineering background and excellent team,” said Scott Broome, CEO of Roper St. Francis Berkeley Hospital, in a statement. “They are forward-thinking and will be able to guide us in creating a health village.”

HDR is the same firm that helped create South Carolina’s iconic Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, which connects Charleston to Mount Pleasant over Stono River. The firm has completed a number of high-profile health care design projects, including Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital Research and Education facility in Florida.

“HDR has extensive experience in doing a green field hospital, or transforming a site with nothing on it and building a welcoming facility that puts patients at the center of design,” Broome said in a statement. “This will be a facility that takes us into the future. We want to be the community’s preferred partner for innovative, patient-centered health care for years to come.”

The hospital, which will be located near the Del Webb retirement community, will be more convenient for nearby residents who currently travel half an hour to the nearest medical facility. Broome compared the health village concept to a college campus with multiple buildings.

J.R. Van Vechten, a senior whose wife is recovering from surgery at the closest hospital, spoke on the challenges of being located so far from medical care. “If I would have driven her to the hospital, she might not have made it,” he said at a town hall meeting.

Plans for the hospital have been in the works for more than seven years, but were delayed due to a lawsuit with Trident Hospital. The design process will take about a year to complete, with a 24-month construction period to follow. The first part of the design focuses on the placement of the buildings in relation to the roads. The second part will incorporate Roper St. Francis teammates in the design of the interior spaces. Completion is estimated for early 2019.

The facility can’t come fast enough for the residents of Berkley County, where the population is nearing 200,000 and is steadily rising every year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The project is expected to create more than 200 jobs in the area.
 

The post Roper St. Francis Partners with HDR on New Hospital Design appeared first on HCO News.

Based on a master plan developed by Toronto-based Urban Strategies, the project was designed and constructed by Stantec Architecture/KPMB Architects, which served as the Planning, Design and Compliance Architects, and HDR Architecture/Diamond Schmitt Architects, the Architects of Record.

The project was designed using the same concept of the recently opened Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. It provides an ideal rehabilitative environment by incorporating the community and giving patients access to nature. The community was especially involved with the Bridgepoint project because of the renovation of the adjacent pre-Confederation Don Jail, which will serve as the hospital’s administrative offices.

The 464-bed hospital is a replacement facility that was necessary for Bridgepoint to increase acuity for patients. The previous hospital had about 550 square feet per patient, according to Stuart Elgie, principal at Stantec Architecture. “General standards would say that hospitals in that area would have about 1,100 square feet per patient, and the facilities were not near current standards,” Elgie said.

The hospital is situated right on the edge of the Don Valley. “The hospital was very keen on staying on that site,” Elgie said. “Properly connecting to that site was really important to their patients and where they wanted to take health care delivery.”

The design incorporated a park that spills into the hospital, inviting the community inside and giving patients a connection to both nature and the outside world. “It’s all about getting [the patients] back into the community and back into their homes and normalizing life for them,” Elgie said.

“There’s lots of proven documentation that people get better when they have natural light and nature. With that brings generally more positive patient outcomes,” he said. “That connection to landscape and nature was the single biggest design objective that our project met.”

The therapy pool on the north end of the hospital, for instance, is nestled within this public park, with lots of glass opening into the park. Above the pool is a therapeutic labyrinth, which accommodates the hospital’s idea of graduated rehabilitation to provide different levels access to nature. On the 10th floor, patients can see views of Ontario and the downtown core. “Ultimately, it’s about providing a sense of normalcy and doing it in a way that helps support patients that desire to get better,” Elgie said.

For patients that are not able to leave their room, the natural setting is also brought into each individual room by allowing patients to have unobstructed views from their window.

The major challenges on the project involved the site because it was a very tight space that required efficient planning for a tight building envelope. Plus, with the restoration of the Don Jail and the project’s involvement in the community, there were several municipal approvals needed that took an extensive amount of time.

While the hospital is operational, there are still significant processes underway. The old hospital needs to be demolished and the Toronto jail, also on the site, has to be demolished. There are still extensive site works that need to be completed. That work should be done in about a year, Elgie said.
 

The post Patient Rehabilitation Expands in Canada appeared first on HCO News.

TMK brings almost 200 employees from offices located all over Germany. It was founded more than 50 years ago and has since designed more than 1,500 health care projects, including large-scale replacement hospitals, community clinics, surgical centers and outpatient facilities, throughout Europe. The company is known for its expertise in evidence-based design.

“This is an exciting announcement for both HDR and TMK and a key part of our global strategy,” said Doug Wignall, president of HDR Architecture, in a statement. “As a firm, HDR has made a commitment not only to designing projects all over the world and bringing the best ideas from around the globe to our clients, but to establishing a permanent presence in strategic locations around the globe. We are excited about the opportunity to blend the unique perspective that TMK offers as a German health care practice into HDR’s global team of thought leaders from North America, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.”

HDR Architecture employs more than 1,300 professionals in 44 offices across the globe, including offices in the U.S., Canada, China, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Mergers like this one are a key part of the firm’s growth strategy. With the addition of TMK, HDR Architecture now has more than 20 percent of employees located outside of the United States. It is a subsidiary of HDR Inc., a global architecture, engineering and consulting firm.

The post HDR Architecture Expands into Germany appeared first on HCO News.