Palomar Medical Center opened its doors on Sunday, August 19, 2012. As one of The Center for Health Design's Pebble Partners, this new facility incorporates evidence-based design into every aspect, melding high tech within a healing environment of gardens and sunlight.
From it’s 11-story vertical garden, private patient rooms, room-side nurse kiosks with smartphones and sunlight in even the surgery suites, the design of the hospital remained focused on creating a healing space. For more information and a virtual tour, click here.
Read what others are saying about the new Palomar Medical Center:
"Hospital of the Future's Top 20 Features"
http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/QUA-283716/Hospital-of-the-Futures-Top-20-Features##
"Patients Moved Into New Palomar Medical Center"
http://www.cbs8.com/story/19314651/new-palomar-medical-center-set-to-open-its-doors-to-patients
According to The Chicago Tribune, the new Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital was designed to provide spaces that are more comfortable and calming than the city's previous facility.
The opening of the doors was covered by ABC News in Chicago and WGNTV. On opening day, 126 patients were moved from Children's Memorial Hospital to the new facility. The new hospital's design provides ample natural light, personal space, and access to a garden.
Pebble Project* partners, ER One at MedStar Washington Hospital Center and HermanMiller Healthcare recently released findings from their disaster-responsive emergency department project. Entitled, ‘Project ER One”, teams from both of these organizations worked together to create a strong emergency room infrastructure that can handle day-to-day operations along with a sudden influx of patients, that could happen when a natural disaster or terrorist attack occurs.
As part of the project, the team identified requirements and key problems that needed to be addressed. A top requirement for Project ER One was to create an emergency department that could be easily replicated in other hospitals. They also identified 10 key problems that affect how well emergency departments can respond in a crisis:
1. Inadequate surge capacity (not scalable)
2. Catastrophic degradation under stress
3. Unsafe re-circulated air
4. Unsafe surface contamination
5. Inadequate arrival/departure capacity
6. Poor control of entry points
7. Poor data availability
8. Poor external and internal communications
9. High dependency on external utilities
10. Inadequate decontamination capability
Next was to create design solutions to address these problems and compile their findings.
"We're doing research for a period of time to really understand how this environment responds better to the needs of the caregivers and the patients. We're looking at how it functions on a day-to-day basis to really better understand if it is supporting the caregivers'" says Jill Joseph, Design Lead for HermanMiller Healthcare.
To read more about Project ER One and their findings, click here.
Video by Herman Miller Healthcare | link to video
* The Pebble Project is The Center for Health Design’s main research initiative. The purpose of the work is to create change in the healthcare industry by providing researched and documented examples of healthcare facilities whose design has made a difference in improving patient and staff outcomes, as well as operating efficiency. For more information about the Pebble Project, email Mark Goodman at mgoodman [at] healthdesign [dot] org.
Looking for more information on ways to incorporate evidence-based design into your projects? Look no further! CHD is now offering two indispensable books at SALE prices. For a limited time only.
A Visual Reference for Evidence-Based Design includes a discussion and definition of EBD and author Jain Malkin, EDAC, illustrates how EBD dovetails with challenging issues of patient care, quality improvement, patient safety and infection control issues.
A Practitioner's Guide to Evidence-Based Design serves as a guide on how to use evidence in design projects, and conduct research to assess effectiveness of design projects. The book focuses on practice based research as opposed to academic research. Stakeholders can even learn about the various ways to incorporate evidence-based design in design projects.