IKM’s success in delivering ongoing healthcare design on the hospital’s main campus along with their credentials and portfolio in healthcare design for major clients in the region made IKM the firm of choice for the design of the new Outpatient Surgery Center at University Town Centre.
“We are excited about being able to engage our expertise in healthcare design at this freestanding center. The concepts that we brought to the design of this facility support a patient-centric efficient and evidence based design approach and solution,” said John Schrott, AIA, ACHA, EDAC, president of IKM and principal in charge of this project. “IKM is pleased to continue to serve this forward-thinking client with the highest level of healthcare design expertise.”
Continually striving to better serve patients, WVU Healthcare opened a new outpatient care clinic at the University Town Centre location in May of 2015. A convenient location for patients, the 22-acre site provided the necessary space for Phase Two of the development, the adjacent Outpatient Surgery Center.
“We’re doing this to meet the increasing demand for access to our specialty care – the kind of care you only find at academic medical centers,” Albert Wright, WVU Medicine-WVU Hospitals president, said about the new project.
Celebrating the groundbreaking and beginning of construction today, this two story addition designed by IKM Architects, provides 60,000 additional square feet of clinical space including four operating rooms and four GI/Endoscopic procedure rooms able to grow to eight and seven respectively; pre-op and post-op recovery in private patient bays, family waiting areas, a café and support spaces.
“The services offered will provide more convenience to outpatients needing surgery and will allow us to have more space for services at the Ruby Memorial campus as well,” Amy Bush, WVU Medicine-WVU Hospitals vice president of operations, said according to the WVU Medicine press release. “We will continue to focus on the more complex surgical and endoscopic cases in the hospital setting.”
Following the Pebble Project Concepts that promote evidence based design, the patient and staff spaces were designed with positive outcomes in mind. Orientation of departments and layouts of individual patient rooms increased patient privacy while maintaining the highest level of patient monitoring by staff. The layout of all areas considers the most efficient circulation of both patients and staff, minimizing the ‘steps taken’ by medical staff over the course of the day.
The $29 million project is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2017.