What a post-pandemic hospital may look like |
When the first wave of Covid-19 patients crashed into New York City hospitals in March, it quickly became clear that this public-health crisis was also a design problem: Without clear signage and sealed rooms and doors to contain infection risk, doctors and nurses could be unwittingly spreading contagion throughout the hospital. To fix its isolation regime, Mount Sinai Hospital in upper Manhattan turned to Ariadne Labs, a center for health-systems innovation affiliated with Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health. Working with the nonprofit MASS Design Group, the Ariadne team quickly helped redesign the hospital’s Covid ward with clearly marked doors, bright warning graphics and places to don and doff personal protective equipment. That emergency facelift marked the beginning of what has turned out to be a transformational year in health-care infrastructure. Just as the pandemic exposed the fissures in society, so too has it accelerated dramatic reforms in how hospitals look, feel and function. “Things that advocates have pursued for decades are now happening,” Neel Shah, an obstetrician who heads the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Ariadne Labs, tells Bloomberg CityLab contributor James Russell. One model for the hospital of the post-Covid era is Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, which has been touted as a pandemic-resistant facility. The building, which opened in 2012, was designed for mass-casualty events, with special ventilation features and a lobby equipped with electrical and medical gas outlets that allow it to accommodate surge beds. That kind of flexibility could be critical for managing future outbreaks.  Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, designed by Perkins & Will, was built to anticipate pandemics and other mass-casualty events. Photographer: Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives Going forward, hospitals and clinics built in the wake of coronavirus could bear more subtle marks of the pandemic, as designers increasingly emphasize making them more welcoming spaces. “Every major health-care facility is moving progressively to include green space and daylight,” says Raj Daswani, who leads health-care projects at the design firm Arup in Northern California. “Research shows these contribute to the healing process.” Such wellness-oriented design isn’t just for patients. Doctors, nurses and other health-care staff have endured brutally stressful working conditions during the Covid crisis. The architects of tomorrow’s hospitals will be acutely aware of their needs for places of respite, too.– David Dudley |
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