Product Innovation, Design Excellence Honored at Healthcare Facilities Symposium

The 2018 Symposium Distinction Award winners were recently honored at the annual Healthcare Facilities Symposium & Expo. The awards program recognizes design teams, projects and individuals who have made a profound contribution to the healthcare design industry. The program accepts submissions of all types and sizes of patient care-related facilities. In addition, it recognizes the best and most innovative new products within the healthcare design and construction industry.

The 2018 Symposium Distinction Award winners are:

Product Awards

Most Sustainable
Envire Rubber Sheet with FlashCove by Roppe Corporation

Envire Rubber Sheet and Tile was developed as a premium formulation that is Red List Chemical Free, offers an HPD and was designed for use in high-traffic areas that require exceptional wear resistance and dimensional stability. The new Symmetry palette of 32-tonal colors provides options that are subtle or bold, or any combination in between. FlashCove Prefabricated Bases offer a solution to the failures that plague site-formed bases where seamless installations are a must, such as healthcare. This patented process enables FlashCove to offer a lifetime guarantee to perform against the daily use of maintenance equipment, point loads, small wheeled traffic or chairs where other bases fail.

Most Innovative
Anti-Ligature Shower Drain Cover by Tower Industries

This anti-ligature drain cover is made exclusively for solid surface showers. When planning the construction of a bathroom for patients suffering from mental illness, it is essential in the design process to eliminate points where a cord, rope or bed sheet can be looped or tied to a fixture to create a point of ligature, which may result in self-harm or, in extreme cases, loss of life. Tower Industries’ patent-pending design accomplishes these goals and more. The easy-to-install drain can only be removed with a custom tool, so the maintenance team can easily access and clean the drain without giving the patients access to the drain space to hide contraband. Even though safety was the purpose of the design, function was kept as priority, as the drain can discharge five gallons per minute.

Architects Choice
Foster Patient Recliner by All Seating

Designed in collaboration with Toronto, Canada-based designer Aaron Duke, Allseating’s Foster Patient Recliner was created with optimal materials and specialized capabilities that stands up to the demands of the healthcare environment while keeping the needs of the patient, family and caregivers in mind. Influenced by three values: comfort, control and connection, Duke followed a methodology of “empathic design,” in which the team attempted to empathize with patients and understand the various experiences they might encounter while using the product. In turn, the recliner was created to allow them to have full control of their environment and encourage patients to ambulate faster. Understanding patients are less likely to ambulate if the patient room recliner is uncomfortable or difficult to function, Duke designed the recliner with a soft and inviting form, rather than one that is clinical and sterile with limited flexibility.

Design Awards

User Centered Award
White Plains Hospital – Major Modernization and CCS Addition submitted by Perkins Eastman
General contractor: Gilbane Building Company

Through innovative planning and design, technology and a hospitality-inspired experience, the modernized and expanded White Plains Hospital provides exceptional, patient-centered care for routine healthcare needs or complex surgery for residents of the communities in Westchester County, New York. This expansion project is specially designed to engage patients and caregivers in their own care, allowing them to heal faster and return home quickly after their surgical procedure, giving birth or other hospital stay. Open and bright spaces, great views and a meticulously programmed interior together create a place of healing that prioritizes the patient experience, reduces the stress and anxiety that often accompany a caregiver’s experience and enhances cross-collaboration among staff.

Team Award
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Universal Exam/Infusion Suite submitted by ZGF

Medical breakthroughs have revolutionized cancer care. To maximize the impact of these new treatments, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is remaking its facilities to better support patients and the staff who treat them. MSK’s $2-billion capital program, OneMSK, re-envisions the healthcare experience, increasing patients’ sense of privacy and dignity while redesigning layouts to help staff deliver more attentive and efficient care. As part of the OneMSK program, MSK tapped ZGF to collaborate on a unit on the 10th floor of the Rockefeller Outpatient Pavilion, challenging the team to create a new patient-room typology: one that could fluidly switch between a private exam space and infusion suite for treatment. The resulting 3,200-square-foot suite of “universal” exam rooms would mark the first time the two settings have been combined.

Adaptive Reuse Award
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center submitted by Ewing Cole

The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a former corporate office building renovated to deliver the latest in cancer treatment and care with a design that brings the soothing influence of nature and the comfort of home to patients undergoing one of life’s most stressful experiences. Although the building was ideally located to provide care to MSK patients close to home, the building itself presented many challenges. Tight floor-to-floor dimensions, combined with a structural grid that ranged from highly regular to completely erratic and tightly spaced, forced the design team to develop unique solutions. Organic, glass fiber-reinforced gypsum column enclosures populate the central public space which, when combined with the ceiling details, presents an “Alice in Wonderland” feeling of surprise and delight.

George Pressler Under 40 Award
Kate Renner with HKS

Kate Renner is a tireless, passionate and dedicated architect and researcher, as well as an industry and community leader. Renner demonstrates leadership skills across the spectrum of work she does at HKS, in the industry and in the community. From leading planning teams, to solving complex design problems, to integrating research into practice, to mentoring the next generation of healthcare design talent, Renner exhibits the attributes of a leader. In 2016, she developed a firm-wide education program, the Idea Fellowship, to shift the paradigm from research as a separate entity to one where research is infused in all projects, processes and culture. The Idea Fellowship offers anyone at HKS the opportunity to ask a question and search for the answers to that question through rigorous research projects. In the industry, Renner serves as an Advisory Board member for the University of Kansas’ Health and Wellness architecture program. Through this program, she works with students interested in healthcare design, including hosting six students as interns at HKS. Renner’s focus on sharing knowledge and resources across projects, teams, clients and the industry through education, mentoring, presentations and publications enable her to transform healthcare design with an exponential impact.

Individual Award
Steve Blye with Legat Architects

Steve Blye’s hands are often speckled with color… evidence of his devotion to shaping pioneering healthcare environments. The colors come from the sketches and paintings he creates, often late into the night, to give healthcare providers a clear vision of their facilities. Blye’s hand-drawn concepts entice clients, but they are not just pretty pictures. Rather, they are fully realized design solutions that support today’s technology, fulfill the clinician’s needs for efficiency, comfort the family caregiver and respect the patient. Blye has adapted his freehand talents to work with his open approach to problem solving and design. Consequently, his projects consider patient, family, doctor, nurse and support services, plus meet technical requirements. Besides warmth, Blye’s drawings contain something often overlooked in computer-generated images: people. Not just people standing around, but people interacting, exploring, engaging… people experiencing their environment. Blye is adamant about designing spaces that distract from the normal anxiety-inducing healthcare process, not just for the patient, but also for the family members and providers. By making the day more enjoyable for clinicians, he often says, the environment makes the healthcare experience more enjoyable for patients. Today’s healthcare environment demands an intricate melding of technology, efficiency, hospitality and the patient experience… a melding that Blye regularly accomplishes.

The Distinction Award winners represent a diversity of talent, creativity, innovation and passion to create healing healthcare environments, chosen by a panel of industry executives. For more info, visit www.hcarefaciliites.com/awards.asp.