SSM uses employee input to design St. Clare facility
St. Louis Business Journal - March 16, 2007
SSM Health Care-St. Louis is gearing up to open its $230 million St. Clare Health Center by letting employees help design the patient rooms.
Using space at SSM St. Joseph Hospital in Kirkwood -- which will close when St. Clare opens in Fenton in late 2008 -- the health system has mocked up a sample patient room to help staff visualize where fixtures, furniture and equipment should go in the new facility.
St. Clare, located at Highway 141 and Bowles Avenue, will have 158 beds, all in private rooms. Construction began in June 2006. St. Joseph is being replaced because its 18-acre campus is landlocked and has exhausted its room for expansion, according to SSM officials.
The budget for the St. Clare mock-up phase is $110,000, said Larissa Amrein, a spokeswoman for St. Joseph. Currently, the mock-up consists of a hospital bed and foam-board "fixtures" that can be moved, changed and marked on; the plan is to construct a full model with actual fixtures and finishes in the same space in the next month.
SSM has been working with Milwaukee-based HGA Architects -- the architect for St. Clare -- to create the sample patient room. Kurt Spiering, vice president and health-care principal at HGA, said the "rapid prototyping" model of acting on employee input is becoming more popular in health-care construction across the country.
"The idea of building a full-blown mock-up like ours isn't often done though," he said. "But we're building 158 of these rooms in the new hospital, so when you think about the time, energy and cost investment, it pays to get it right the first time. This is a way to take the best of the employees' input and give them a chance to kick the tires."
Sherry Hausmann, who is president of St. Joseph and will become president of St. Clare, said she has taken more than 160 employees on "guided tours" through the mock-up since it was built last year. All of St. Joseph's 900 staff members have been encouraged to walk through the sample room, which is open 24 hours a day. They'll be working in the new hospital, so their input is important to SSM, Hausmann said.
In fact, staff feedback has radically altered the original floor plan for the 370-square-foot patient rooms. Preliminary plans called for adjacent, mirror-image, two-room footprints with a nurse's observation window looking onto both rooms. Now each room will have its own nurse observation station -- and the rooms will be "same-handed," meaning everything will be laid out the same way in each unit.
Spiering said the original layout also called for a bathroom across the room from the patient bed, but based on staff suggestions, it now will be along the same wall as the bed.
"The No. 1 situation when patients slip and fall in a hospital is when they're walking between the bed and bathroom," Spiering said. "In the previous design, the bathroom was about 12 feet away. Now it will be five feet away."
Employees also expressed concern about the tightness of a sleeping alcove for family members in the original design. Because of their feedback, the alcove was moved to a more open part of the room. "The articulation between the patient zone and the family zone was the biggest redesign we've made," Hausmann said.
She said each room will include a secured pass-through drawer from the hallway where a pharmacy employee will deposit the day's medications for each patient. Many other supplies will be kept in or near patient rooms, including bandages and other items in a small cart that can be hidden from view in each room.