Denver’s Saint Joseph Hospital to Open Dec. 13

DENVER — The new, $623 million Saint Joseph Hospital near downtown Denver is on schedule to open Dec. 13, hospital executives said during a Sept. 16 facility tour.
Totaling 831,321 square feet, the new facility is adjacent to the almost 150-year-old current hospital and will have 400 beds. The hospital will have fewer beds than the former hospital, but patients with less-severe cases will be able to transfer to outpatient facilities such as ambulatory surgery centers.
One of the most sophisticated areas of the whole hospital, and one of the most significant changes from the old hospital’s design, is the second floor. It’s called the Interventional Platform, where surgery, the cardiac cath lab, the electrophysiology lab (EP) and endoscopy services will be located near each other.
“On the same floor, we have all 21 of our ORs, which includes two heart rooms and two dedicated hybrid rooms,” said the hospital’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shawn Dufford. “A hybrid room is where you can have an open-cavity procedure, but you can also do a noninvasive procedure. We also have a dedicated neuro room with inter-operative CT scanning, two robotic suites, and the remainder of the rooms have all been designed similar [to each other] so that we can do any case in any room at any time.”
All the supplies and equipment for the operating rooms are stored on carts instead of cabinets, which can collect dust and possible infectious bacteria. Everything needed for the operating rooms is centrally located on the floor.
“It’s a design that a lot of people are trying to mimic right now. With this space, you can increase the collaboration so that our doctors can work closer with each other and run cases by each other because they’re in the vicinity,” Dufford said.
The hospital aims to be one of the most advanced cardiology centers in the region. To help with open-heart surgeries, the facility installed state-of-the-art Berchtold lights that don’t create a shadow even when a surgeon is operating directly in front of them.
“You can literally have your whole body over [the operating table] and there would be no shadow. It’s phenomenal new technology,” said Bain Farris, the hospital’s president and CEO. “When you go in for a heart procedure, the last thing you want is a shadow.”
One of the most noticeable designs to improve visitor experience is the inclusion of balconies attached to waiting rooms and floor-to-ceiling windows that allow natural light to fill the space.
“We wanted to take advantage of the Colorado weather, so there are balconies on every floor,” Farris said.
Two of the biggest operational and design changes for the new hospital are the emergency department and ambulance entry. Saint Joseph is changing its triage method, bringing patients directly into the department instead of having less-acute patients sit in a waiting area. The hospital also redesigned patient treatment areas to be similar to in-patient rooms, replacing separator curtains with glass sliding doors. There is also an area in the emergency department for seniors, which is isolated from the rest of the patients.
Design for the ambulance entry was a long-awaited change from the old hospital, said Barb Jahn, the hospital’s chief operating officer, and they involved the EMS drivers in the design process. Currently, ambulances are arriving at the same area as the loading dock and physicians’ entrance, but the new hospital has a ramp only for ambulances that leads directly into the emergency department.
Being one of the busiest birthing hospitals in the state, the new hospital has reserved the fourth floor for all women’s services, including labor and delivery. There is a dedicated elevator only for moms in labor that only operates between the first and fourth floors.
The hospital is also improving the patient experience by equipping patient rooms with private baths and showers, flat-screen televisions, Wi-Fi and a designated area where family members can stay overnight.

Denver-based Davis Partnership and H+L Architecture formed a joint venture in order to provide design services for the new Saint Joseph replacement hospital. ZGF in Portland, Ore., was the design architect, and Minneapolis-based Mortenson Construction led construction.
The campus sits on nearly 50 acres with 3.5 acres of parks and garden areas. Lakewood, Colo.-based engineering firm Martin/Martin provided detention and water quality for three ponds on the campus and worked with Davis Partnership on the landscape architecture.

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Health Care Construction Expected to Increase

MINNEAPOLIS — A majority of health care facility administrators expect construction to increase in the next one to two years, according to a survey conducted by Mortenson Construction.

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.

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Denver’s Saint Joseph Hospital to Open Dec. 13

Health Care Construction Expected to Increase