Palomar Health built a new "hospital of the future" with the goal of opening the "best public hospital in America." To achieve this, it created staff Champion Teams who, working with Center for Health Design “coaches", researched the impact of several evidence-based design principals using a balanced scorecard of quality, customer service, financial strength, and workforce/workplace development.
Palomar Health also plans to obtain measures for a variety of operational and health related outcomes in the next years. This will help evaluate for changes that have resulted from the cultural transformation and new building design established by The Champion Teams’ work.
Palomar Health has written about their study evaluating the impact of flooring and ceiling tiles on objective and subjective measures of noise on an inpatient nursing unit. These results were also presented at an international acoustics conference hosted in Hong Kong.
Publications
- Frederick, C., Roy, K. P., Taylor, E., Keller, A., Jackson, M., & Kinsey, R. (2012). The effects of material selections on noise levels in two patient care units. Healthcare Design, 12(5), 24–28.
"A study was designed to evaluate the impact of the choices for flooring and ceiling tile on the activity noise levels within the corridors and nurses’ stations so that better-informed decisions can be made about interior finishes in new construction projects and ongoing refurbishment projects.
- Keller, A., & Zensius, N. (2009). Pebbles aim for hospitals that are cleaner, greener, and safer. Healthcare Design, 9(4), 16–20.
“Studies show that sustainable design can have a significant impact on patient and staff health and safety. By implementing green design strategies into their building projects to improve safety and documenting their outcomes, these Pebble Partners continue to add to the current body of knowledge, and help make the business case for going green stronger.”
- Zensius, N. (2009). Palomar Pomerado Health uses Second Life to explore the hospital of the future. Healthcare Design, 9(2), 20–20,22,24. “ Many healthcare executives may not even be aware of the online 3-D virtual world Second Life, for example, or the potential value it could bring to their projects. Portale, who spent 20 years at the forefront of the healthcare IT sector before joining Palomar Pomerado last May sees it as his role to encourage experimentation in leveraging such innovation, not only at the organizational level, but across the healthcare industry at large.”
- Cheng, P. (2008). The Pebble Collaborative: An acoustic conversation. Healthcare Design, 8(8), 12–12,14.
"A study was designed to evaluate the impact of the choices for flooring and ceiling tile on the activity noise levels within the corridors and nurses’ stations so that better-informed decisions can be made about interior finishes in new construction projects and ongoing refurbishment projects."
- Joseph, A., Bosch, S., Frederick, C., & Jackson, M. (2007). Researching the effectiveness of a participatory evidence-based design process. Healthcare Design, 7(3), 8–8,10,12.
“PPH initiated an innovative participatory design process early in 2005 to plan for the expansion of the existing Pomerado Hospital in Poway, California, and construction of a replacement facility for Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, California. PPH leadership chose to use a participatory evidence-based design process where individuals from all departments in the hospital were invited to participate in researching new and emerging ideas in healthcare design.”