Cutting Down Unsustainable Sprawl Around Hospitals
VIDEO (coming soon)
| PANELIST SLIDES | |
Over the past several decades, hospitals evolved into massive disconnected medical islands, often acquiring and clearing adjacent neighborhoods for parking and expansions, rather than following a growth plan to create medical districts as integrated parts of livable communities. This unsustainable sprawl is the antithesis of the healthy, walkable communities that public health experts advocate today. This panel will focus on how to plan, design and build the health care campus of the future – a campus that is integrated within the community and includes mixed-use, residential, and public spaces that yield better performing health care facilities that appeal to patients, families, medical staff, employees, and neighbors.
Planners are creating new health care facilities that serve as walkable town center environments, with shops, hotels and even contemplative spaces for patients and their families.
Health care facilities must be planned with an eye on the well-being of the general community as well as the people they serve to heal. That means including bustling areas that are comfortable and enticing, and collaborating with surrounding services, from orchestras to coffee shops, said panelists during a session at the University of Miami Global Business Forum, held Jan. 12–14, 2011.
“Town center campuses for hospitals are the future,” said Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, dean of UM’s School of Architecture. “The design of the building has to be as good as the doctors.” Panel moderator Charles C. Bohl, an associate professor and director of master real estate development and urbanism at UM’s School of Architecture, showcased recent projects that did just that at the session, titled “The Hospital of Tomorrow: Erasing Unsustainable Sprawl.”
 |
|
Panelists (L-R) Peter Cummings, Chairman, RAM
|
Bon Secours Virginia Health System, for instance, created its flagship location by transforming a once-overlooked grocery store into a primary care center. At another site, the faith-based organization, which has 100 facilities, started with eight acres and grew to 75 acres. The 130-bed facility includes a light-filled lobby with a waterfall and a chapel, with views to a meditation garden and walking trails. Incorporating hospitality strategies gleaned from The Walt Disney Co. and The Ritz-Carlton Hotels, Bon Secours CEO Peter Bernard, whose company sponsored the session, described the intent to welcome and comfort patients and visitors, as well as to support staff.
“We have changed the bar in terms of delivery of health care,” Bernard said. “We’re trying to design the hospital so that at any particular place within the organization you can have a spiritual experience, whether you’re a patient, a doctor or an employee.”
The macro trends and changes in health care facilities are driven by those it both employs and serves, said Andrew K. Bachrodt, a partner at Kurt Salmon Associates, a global management consulting firm that specializes in retail, consumer products and health care.
“Consumers and patients are more health care savvy,” he said. “And they’re faced with sharing a greater portion of the financial burden. They’re going to demand better access, greater convenience and better clinical results.”
What’s more, hospitals are typically a community’s largest employer, making them a strong economic base. “It’s time for them to be reinvested in and redeveloped,” Bachrodt said. “Families will be coming from farther away and will need to spend more time at that health care environment. They will need places to eat, to shop and to stay. It’s important that health care providers think not as an institution but as a community asset that spans far beyond health care delivery.”
Way beyond, said Peter Cummings, the chairman of RAM Real Estate who recently worked on the Detroit Medical Center. That hospital project involved collaboration with the community, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The idea was to recharge a debilitated neighborhood and create a safe, welcoming environment with retail and even residential units.
“The perception of quality in health care is reinforced by the quality of the neighborhood,” said Cummings, who learned that Detroit’s residents would drive 40 minutes to suburban hospitals simply because they offered ample parking. “In terms of simple ideas, quality neighborhoods depend on convenience and safety. The last thing you want is to feel unsafe when you’re in the hospital, and slightly vulnerable to begin with. You could have 20 or 30 safety vehicles cruising a neighborhood. But there’s nothing that substitutes for people living and working there.”
Is the push for density desirable, or is it in conflict with the move toward more sustainable hospitals? Joseph A. Reagan, vice president and regional executive at Wexford Science + Technology LLC, believes that research parks, for one, are successful thanks to surrounding activities. His company is developing the University of Miami Life Science and Technology Park.
“The opportunity for collaboration and commercialization is important for that juxtaposition,” Reagan said. “We see an advantage of density to bring people together. I believe there’s an overlap.”
Health centers, hospitals and research parks can do more than just bring people together. They can also give them something to do. That’s why Plater-Zyberk urges hospitals to participate in urban programming like the weekly roller-skating event held at the Detroit Medical Center.
“I’m asking hospitals to think of themselves as the leaders,” Plater-Zyberk said. “Hospital administrations are not used to being real estate developers. But I’m asking you to think about programming for a larger trajectory than your own facility, and give people reasons to come other than health care, to help create the walkable communities that might help keep people out of the hospital.”
