An Integrated Experience
By Michael Ufer and George Mann
Furniture is a crucial design tool
Have you ever experienced an environment that, upon seeing it or entering into it, you knew you were in a special place? What made you feel this way? Was it the warm welcome you received? Was it the physical surroundings that comforted you?
Or was it the positive memories the space evoked?
Integrated environments are designed with this experience in mind. Every detail is working together — the exterior architecture, the interior environment, the use of building materials and finishes, as well as the design and placement of furniture and art.
Healthcare environments today are designed to engage the whole person. Spaces are purposefully designed for an integrated experience that responds to the mind, body and spirit of the patients and families as well as the staff, nurses and doctors who use and operate the facility.
Crafting an integrated design experience in healthcare requires a diverse team of designers, planners, architects, researchers and builders who have discussed, explored and examined all aspects of the design from its inception. What is the design vision for the project?
San Antonio's Vision of the Future
By Scott Cannon
Methodist Stone Oak Hospital focuses on patient satisfaction through technology
Many of the hospitals in San Antonio, Texas, were built in the 1960s and 1970s, well before anyone thought of patients as consumers. By the beginning of the 21st century, these facilities and our attitudes toward patients were both outdated. With the needs of market and technological needs of the 21st century in mind, leaders of Methodist Stone Oak Hospital planned and, in December 2008 completed construction of a 282,370-square-foot, 132-bed comprehensive tertiary care hospital and an attached 120,000-square-foot medical office building, with provisions for up to 350 beds in future phases on the 40-acre site.
Conceptualized by the owner as a ‘hospital of the future’ for the San Antonio market, Methodist Stone Oak is designed to respond to rapid changes
in the patient population and healthcare delivery, including new diagnoses and treatment modalities, at higher levels of quality, efficiency and, especially, patient
satisfaction.
The hospital provides major acute healthcare services and communications technology includes bedside admitting, electronic medical records, electronic physician order management and an imaging picture archiving system.
Methodist Healthcare and its hospitals provide quality healthcare in San Antonio and 26 surrounding counties. Since opening its first hospital in 1963, Methodist Healthcare has become the area’s second largest private employer with more than 7,000 employees in 22 healthcare facilities.
Thinking Out of the Vault
By Ron Allison, M.D.
A reassessment of the vault in radiation oncology
Vault is a particularly appropriate description for the classical way radiation oncology linear accelerators are housed. To save on the costs of shielding for
these high-energy radiation treatment devices, units are generally located in the basement or subbasement of hospitals and private offices.
The depressing result of dreary location and housing truly is a disservice to the millions of patients annually undergoing radiation therapy for cancer especially since radiation treatment often requires multiple visits — about 40 or so for prostate external beam. In addition, the quality of surroundings may not only be critical from a patient and staff psychological perspective, but in this very competitive medical environment, it may also have significant implication
for decisions regarding where patients seek therapy. As in many other medical endeavors, the treatment environment in addition to treatment quality is a critical
factor for patients who have a choice where care will be delivered. For those and other reasons, more open, efficient and often stunning architecture is employed to showplace hospitals and treatment facilities.
All too often these building improvements stop at the actual area where radiation treatment is delivered.
