Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Heart, Ohio: 2023 Design Showcase Award Of Advantage

Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Heart, Ohio

Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Heart (CCOC) in Akron, Ohio, got down to create a hospitality-driven vacation spot for orthopedic, musculoskeletal, and reconstructive care. Guiding the best way was a design mission to create an “oasis of calm” that reimagines the hospital atmosphere by means of each hotel-like experiences and aesthetics.

The 165,000-square-foot undertaking, submitted to the Design Showcase by HGA (Milwaukee), leverages quite a few connections to nature to blur the traces between inside and outside whereas integrating a supplies and end palette that delivers luxurious whereas nonetheless assembly rigorous inpatient design requirements.

Accomplished in November 2021, CCOC not solely ups the ante on expertise however does so inside a extremely environment friendly format that diminished journey nurse time by 13 p.c.

Right here, lead designers from HGA Jes Skaug, affiliate vp and senior undertaking designer, and Paul Widlarz, vp and principal, share perception on a number of the undertaking’s defining options.

Healthcare Design: The design of Crystal Clinic was pushed by the purpose of making an “oasis of calm.” What did that phrase imply for the undertaking crew, and the way did it form the preliminary design?

Paul Widlarz: This was CCOC’s first freestanding hospital undertaking, and one of many main objectives was to create a spot, an oasis, the place CCOC’s distinctive popularity for superior medical care could be supplied in a setting that felt extra like hospitality than hospital. With an emphasis on making a superior affected person expertise, CCOC was designed deliberately to instill a way of calm for sufferers and their households.

From the second a affected person enters the positioning, care was taken to make sure their journey was intuitive and stress free. Wayfinding, supported by clear and considerate signage, ample parking near the principle entry, and a welcoming drop-off cover, makes arrival and entry easy.

Inside, to create a way of calm, the design makes use of a palette that’s mushy and quiet, with a concentrate on soothing neutrals in lieu of busy patterns and graphics. Collectively, the positioning, constructing presentation, inside facilities, world-class drugs, and caregiving coalesce in an oasis of calm for excellent surgical outcomes and affected person experiences.

One problem to design was the encompassing enterprise park’s deed restrictions. How had been you capable of design inside these parameters and nonetheless create a singular and branded expertise?

Jes Skaug: The enterprise park’s deed restrictions said that any new constructing was required to be configured of rectangular shapes (no curved varieties) and needed to be clad in “earth-tone masonry” in step with different buildings within the park. CCOC employed a contemporary brick mix of heat, mushy grays that had been brighter and stood out from the predominantly red-toned neighboring buildings. The mix additionally used a mixture of each clean and textured bricks to create a pores and skin that was dynamic in the best way it mirrored daylight.

Different buildings within the park are additionally homogenous of their lack of transparency and openness, fortified with small, punched openings or ribbon home windows with closely tinted glass, with little to no window depth. In distinction, CCOC created a really porous façade the place glass and masonry look like equal in share. Dramatic and deeply inset chamfered home windows and the usage of clear glass permits visibility into the constructing from exterior, making the constructing extra inviting and fewer intimidating.

How did this system itself—and the will to turn out to be a nationwide vacation spot for care—encourage the hospitality-focused design?

Widlarz: The companies CCOC gives are elective, so the group knew that differentiating itself available in the market was one of the simplest ways to draw sufferers who’ve a alternative of their location for surgical procedure. The proprietor requested that the constructing and atmosphere not look or really feel like a hospital and actually wished to supply sufferers with an elevated and distinctive expertise that couldn’t be discovered elsewhere in the neighborhood.

In distinction to its rivals, CCOC took a nonclinical, or nonhealthcare, method and rooted its aesthetic in hospitality and respite, making a affected person expertise that focuses on visible calmness and connectedness to nature.

Because of the comparatively low acuity of the sufferers, this system lent itself to design options which might be much less confining than people who assist vital care. The standard two-day keep feels extra like a rejuvenating time away at a boutique resort fairly than a hospital.

What are some key hospitality rules adopted within the undertaking, and methods the design helps them?

Skaug: In early design discussions with the proprietor, it turned clear {that a} predominant differentiator could be to create an atmosphere the place relations of sufferers had alternative in the place they wait. The foyer, eating room, café, and lounge seating areas are actually the continuation of 1 house and assist household discovering a spot that’s most snug for them.

Inside seating and eating areas are immediately adjoining to exterior gardens, and there may be an exterior balcony related to the surgical lounge on Stage 2. This embraced panorama is an extension of the inside expertise and was a key precept to creating the hospitality imaginative and prescient.

Moreover, hospitality-like concierge and check-in desks instantly greet sufferers and guests upon entry. In contrast to typical hospitals the place rows of open seating dominate the house, ready at CCOC is intimate and screened by a sculptural wooden wall that’s the backdrop to the reception desks, affording affected person areas privateness and never permitting seating to overshadow the primary impression upon entry.

What are a number of the notable design options that helped guarantee higher operational effectivity, as properly?

Widlarz: CCOC positioned an ideal emphasis on Lean operations. A lot in order that they devoted a number of months to Lean course of enchancment workout routines with hospital service line leaders, led by Vizient with the participation and engagement of designers and planners from HGA.

Outcomes of this collaborative course of included a hyper-efficient inpatient platform that diminished nurse journey distances by greater than 13 p.c from a typical racetrack unit design. This was completed by means of the considerate planning of affected person rooms into 10-bed neighborhoods on a single ground plate that accommodated 60 whole inpatient rooms.

Every neighborhood not solely ensures optimum visible connections for nurses into affected person rooms but additionally streamlines their entry to provides and assist areas to permit for extra time spent on the bedside. The 60-bed platform additionally permits for the flexing of beds and staffing to satisfy day-to-day and shift-to-shift census whereas lowering the inefficiency of staffing to minimal ranges throughout a number of flooring.

Equally, the surgical platform positioned all parts of the 12-operating-room surgical service line on a single ground, optimally positioned to make sure a clean and seamless technique of motion for sufferers, workers, surgeons, and supplies.

Jennifer Kovacs Silvis is  editor-in-chief of Healthcare Design. She could be reached at [email protected].