Healthcare Design - March 2020 - 38

The

Center

JOINING THE RANKS

the full spectrum of patient populations from
neonates to the elderly and is also a teaching
hospital. The greenfield project, a full-replacement hospital, was designed and built over
six years and involved a large, interdisciplinary team whose focus evolved during the last
decade from pre-planning to post-occupancy
evaluation. Jurors noted that the project is an
outstanding model of interdisciplinary collaborative work and applauded the depth and
breadth of the team.

The Center welcomes four projects to the list of
the Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Award
recipients By Debra Levin

GOLD: Children's Hospital of Richmond
at VCU, submitted by HKS Inc. This project
completes a children's pavilion as a comprehensive, integrated facility exclusively for children
and the only full-service children's hospital in
central Virginia. Design solutions were developed with full annotation of EBD strategies
linked to the initial mission and goals. Jurors
commented that the research for relevant evidence and how it was critically evaluated is exemplary. This project is an in-progress research
study, and the team has done an admirable job
of documenting and communicating their findings for each step of the journey.

N 2017, The Center for Health Design launched a new award
program to recognize projects and organizations using an
evidence-based design (EBD) process in their building design. The Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Award was
born out of a desire to both encourage and recognize the use
of the eight-step EBD process, from defining the evidencebased goals and objectives to measuring and sharing postoccupancy performance results. Submissions are judged
on their exemplary achievement across the three touchstones of the EBD
process: collaboration among an interdisciplinary team and stakeholder
education, engagement, and development; evaluation and application of
found research to link design to outcomes and measurement of results;
and sharing of how the EBD process was applied and the knowledge disseminated as well as its potential for application on future projects.
Each year, an expert panel of key industry stakeholders, including
academics, architects, designers, healthcare executives, planners, facility executives, patient and family advisers, and researchers, review the
submissions. Three levels of the award-Silver, Gold, and Platinum-are
considered, reflecting successively greater application and achievement
of the EBD process and principles.
At the 2019 Healthcare Design Expo & Conference in New Orleans,
four projects were recognized with EBD Touchstone Awards, including
three in the Gold category and one in the Silver category.

SILVER: UK Healthcare Kentucky Children's Hospital NICU, submitted by HGA.
The multidisciplinary team for this project
reimagined how a NICU could deliver better
patient outcomes. To educate the team about
the latest research, a mother-baby consultant,
lighting specialists, researchers, and acousticians were added to the team and voice-of-thecustomer focus groups were held. The final
design included single-family rooms that supported family-centered care with spaces for
privacy that allow families to adjust and transition to going home with infants who need
additional care. Jurors commented that the
post-occupancy research included metrics and
analysis and that dissemination of the results
was comprehensive.

GOLD: Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin/8 North
Tower Medical Surgical Unit Buildout, submitted by HGA. The
project involved a combination of EBD, Lean, and change management
as well as input from a broad-based interdisciplinary team to reimagine
a unit to better support patients and staff. Jurors were impressed with
the evaluation of patient and staff outcomes and the research, documentation, and information sharing that they continued to do for years after
the project was completed. The floor plan has become the basis for all
new units at the hospital.

The Center congratulates all the 2019 Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Award recipients and welcomes them to a short list of
exemplary projects achieving this status. 
Debra Levin is president and CEO of The Center for
Health Design. She can be reached at D L E V I N @
H E A LT H D E S I G N . O R G .

GOLD: New Parkland Hospital, submitted by NPH Research Coalition. One of the busiest public safety-net hospitals, Parkland serves

MARCH 2020

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Healthcare Design - March 2020

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