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Brighter rooms, more space for visiting family members and an overall warmer environment aren’t just nice-to-have items when you’re building a health-care facility. Such features have been shown to actually help patients heal more quickly and get out of the hospital faster, and even save lives.

Two hospital buildings now rising from the thawing ground in West Des Moines will incorporate these types of amenities, based on a growing body of evidence that what makes you feel good about a building is also good for your health.

Iowa Health – Des Moines’ Michael R. Myers Hospital is beginning to take shape at the northwest corner of Westown Parkway and 60th Street, and construction of Mercy Medical Center – West Lakes, just to the east on the parkway at 59th Place, is well under way. The $118.5 million Myers Hospital is scheduled to open in early 2010, and Mercy – West Lakes, with a construction cost of $94.5 million, is slated to open in late 2009. Though they’re competing projects, they share many common characteristics as the two health systems strive to create state-of-the-art healing environments for their patients.

At the same time, Mercy and Iowa Health, which have pledged not to forget Des Moines in their rush to serve the western suburbs, are also wrapping up significant renovations of their main campuses near downtown. Broadlawns Medical Center also announced plans earlier this year for a three-phase, $44 million expansion that could begin as early as this fall.

In many ways, each construction project builds on lessons from the past, said Sid Ramsey, vice president of marketing and business development for Iowa Health – Des Moines.

“Every time that we do a remodeling or a new project, we do an assessment post-opening – what worked well, what didn’t work well,” he said. “We try to build on the ideas that worked well for us, and the things that didn’t work so well, we try to change those. And it’s also talking to our caregivers about the best ways they feel would support them in delivering care. And as part of Iowa Health System we’re also able to share best practices across the system.”

Each of the new hospitals will incorporate industry best practices as well. Clinical studies on the benefits of natural sunlight for patients, for instance, were an important reason Mercy incorporated large windows into its new East Tower on its main campus and will do the same at its new West Des Moines hospital, said Joe LeValley, Mercy’s senior vice president for planning and advocacy.

Among a number of studies supporting the positive effects of natural light in hospitals, one found that patients with views of nature went home three-quarters of a day sooner, used fewer medications and reduced their cost of stay by an average of $500.

“It’s all part of the evidence-based design approach that we’re taking with our facilities,” LeValley said. The rooms will also be larger to encourage frequent family visits, because clinical studies have also proven that helps in the healing process.

“Both in terms of appearance and amenities, we’re striving to make the replacement hospital at West Lakes be a warm and inviting place for families,” LeValley said.

Built for efficiency

Both hospitals will be built to save nurses steps and position them closer to their patients.

At the Myers Hospital, “you’re not going to see the one large nursing station that you typically see in a hospital,” Ramsey said. “You’re going to have all of your nursing personnel decentralized so they’re close to the patients.” Positioned throughout the hallways between patient rooms, each small station will be equipped with all of the equipment and supplies the nurses will need, he said. “And if a family member has a question, he or she doesn’t need to go down the hall searching for a nurse; the nurse will be right there.”

Mercy’s West Lakes hospital, like the East Tower it opened last year, will be twice as wide as a traditional hospital building.

“By doing that you can put all your supplies, equipment, medicines in the center and reduce the walking that nurses have to do,” LeValley said. “Even the break rooms are in the center. So it allows more time for the nurses to be with patients and makes for less fatigue, so there are real improvements in how care is delivered.”

Another move by Mercy to increase efficiency was to design each of the West Lakes rooms “same handed,” meaning the layout of every room will be identical, rather than making each room a mirror image of the one next to it as is typically done to line up the bathroom plumbing for adjacent rooms.

“This type of layout has been clinically proven to deliver a higher quality of care,” LeValley said, noting that the staff won’t have to search for equipment or supplies, which also reduces the potential for medical errors.

“From an efficiency perspective, that’s been a real joy, to start with a clean piece of paper and design it in a way that works best for our physicians and staff,” Iowa Health’s Ramsey said. At the Myers Hospital, many key functions, among them surgery, imaging and the emergency department, will be located on the ground floor for patients’ convenience, he noted.

“So if you’re coming in for inpatient or outpatient surgery, it’s right there near the entrance,” he said. “If someone needs an X-ray, they go 30 or 40 feet down the hall and boom, they’re there.” Similarly, the centrally located imaging department will be convenient to the emergency room, which will be on the opposite end of the floor.

The efficiency extends vertically as well. “We’ve got a dedicated elevator at the emergency-room end, so if a woman comes in who’s in labor and needs to get up to the (obstetrics) floor, we have a patient-dedicated elevator,” Ramsey said. “Likewise, if we have a patient who has had chest pains and needs to be admitted for observation and treatment, that elevator goes right up to where the (intensive-care unit and cardiac-care unit) rooms are.”

The slightly curved hallways on the patient floors were designed “so you won’t step off an elevator and look straight down a 100-yard hallway,” Ramsey said. “And of course, we’ve taken the (building’s) footprint and bent it into a boomerang shape, so you won’t have that long corridor sense.”

Renovations wrapping up

Greater Des Moines residents won’t have to wait for the two new hospitals to open to benefit from the latest hospital technologies and design concepts. Many of the best ideas being built into those facilities can already be found in multimillion-dollar projects that Iowa Health and Mercy are completing on their main campuses this year.

The three-year, $19 million renovation of the surgery department at Iowa Methodist Medical Center that’s wrapping up this year has transformed that area of the hospital, which also serves Blank Children’s Hospital.

Mercy is likewise in the final stages of a multiphase, $18 million expansion of its surgical wing that is expected to be completed in June.

At Iowa Methodist, the first thing patients and their families see upon entering the surgical department are the new family waiting areas, which include both a living-room-style area with a fireplace as well as a four-season patio area and a separate children’s play area. Families are given restaurant-style pagers that signal them when it’s time to go back to see their loved one following surgery. A separate children’s play area includes the U.S.S. Recovery, a tot-sized ship to play on.

Each of the hospital’s 17 operating rooms has been renovated with updated equipment, and three of them have been enlarged to be the same as those that will be built in the Myers Hospital. Nearly all of the equipment in the new operating rooms is anchored to the ceiling on adjustable swing arms to increase efficiency.

The renovation includes all private pre-operative rooms for patients, replacing open spaces separated by curtains, and separate pediatric pre-operative and post-operative areas. Even the hallways are laid out in a new configuration so that patients being prepared for surgery won’t pass by unconscious patients who are coming out of surgery.

Mercy’s project included the construction of six new operating suites and the renovation of existing suites, LeValley said. “It will mean a net increase of two surgical suites, for a total of 18 large and modern suites,” he said. The project, like Iowa Health’s, also encompassed renovation and expansion of both the pre-surgical and post-surgical areas.

“The Sisters of Mercy have always been known for building the most modern facilities possible,” he said, “and that tradition continues with the renovations and new construction taking place.