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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Hospital or Hotel Room? Healthcare Gets a Makeover

Remember when rooms in medical centers were designed to reflect their sterility? Harsh lighting, drab colors and cramped recreational quarters were de rigueur. Not so anymore. Today’s health facility rooms are more likely to resemble those of a hotel than those of a clinic. Industry insiders say that the transition medical centers are making in design has a big payoff. Patients and their families are more comfortable and less agitated during visits. University Cardiovascular Medical Group’s new facility at the California Health & Longevity Institute in Westlake Village is a case in point. There, patients wait on green velour couches while watching flat screen televisions. The waiting area features chandeliers, brass lamps with intricate Eastern designs and stalks of hearty, green bamboo. The art on the walls includes watercolor paintings as well as framed sketches of the human anatomy reminiscent of those that Leonardo da Vinci drew. UCMG’s Westwood facility, which has been in operation for about six months, is a departure in look from its flagship office on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles. That office has a more traditional setting, according to Dr. Jignesh Patel, associate medical director of UCLA’s heart transplant program. The soothing ambiance featured at UCMG’s satellite facility in Westlake Village has had a marked impact on patients, Dr. Patel believes. “They feel more comfortable, certainly more relaxed,” he said. “They don’t feel like they’re in a doctor’s office or a hospital.” Despite the difference in look, UCMG’s Westlake Village office offers the same services,blood tests, stress tests, electrocardiograms,found in the Westwood office. Of its mission, Dr. Patel said, “It’s kind of a new way of providing preventive health care to people who want to get a comprehensive evaluation out of the usual health care services provided by their regular insurance, so this facility was set up with comprehensive services for looking at all issues relating to a healthy lifestyle, which included a cardiovascular component.” When patients have blood pressure screenings, the office’s plush surroundings particularly come into play. While many patients who have a blood pressure screening are prone to “white coat syndrome,” a condition in which blood pressure rises because patients are nervous about being in doctor’s office, “over here, they feel kind of relaxed, which their blood pressure certainly reflects,” Patel said. “They are much less prone to anxiety.” UCMG is not alone in offering a cozy environment in a medical facility. The largest medical centers in the Valley are also undergoing makeovers of sorts. Kirk Rose of architectural firm The SmithGroup, which has had a long relationship with the local Providence hospitals, discussed changes the firm made at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center. Many of them involved giving the rooms a certain aesthetic appeal while ensuring that health codes could still be met. For example, sheet vinyl floors were put in with a wood finish, making the rooms more home-like in appearance. “You can’t use real wood because of the potential infection issues,” Rose explained. The vinyl floors installed are an easy surface to clean, and they curve up the wall, so there’s no place for dirt to go, he continued. Striking a balance between aesthetics and sterility also came into play when the firm decided to change the fabrics used at the hospital, opting for bold colors and patterns. “In the past, the trend was to make them neutral, no pattern and less color,” Rose said. While the fabrics used now have a less institutional look and feel, they can still stand up to wear and tear and cleaning. “The other thing, on each floor, we created an accent wall,” Rose went on. “The accent wall is facing the bed. It’s a lot less institutional. A lot of institutional spaces have white or tan walls. We were a little more bold.” Moreover, there are paintings on the walls and some sculptures. To do away with the institutional feel in the maternity ward, pipes have been concealed, Rose said. And to give the families of newborns more privacy, there are plans to give babies their own distinct spaces at the neonatal intensive care unit Providence Holy Cross has in the works. At Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, there are also plans underway to transform the labor, delivery and recovery rooms. Like Providence, the hospital will adopt vinyl floors with a hardwood look, a departure from its current white linoleum. Also, wall colors will change from drab mauve to warm green. “The green color is more contemporary and gives more of a calm feeling to patients,” Women’s Services Director Sally McGann explained of the shift. The way the rooms are lit will be enhanced with new fixtures and a switch from vertical blinds to window covers. In total, the changes will amount to a couple of hundred thousand dollars, according to McGann. Most will be in place by this June. Patient feedback was the catalyst for the changes. The hospital decided to implement them after nearly a quarter of the patients who filled out a questionnaire indicated that a warmer d & #233;cor was needed. While the hospital plans to eventually make changes throughout its wards, beginning with the labor, delivery and recovery rooms was key, hospital spokeswoman Andie Bogan believes. “They’re not sick,” she said of the occupants of those rooms. “They’re women having babies.” Gwen Matthews, senior vice president of clinic services and chief nursing officer at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, was inspired to alter rooms there after visiting her own family members in hospitals. “I became acutely aware that most hospitals don’t really design their spaces with the family in mind,” she said. “When we were building the West Tower, I wanted to make sure that we made provisions for not only supporting the patient but the family. In every room we have provided family space, patient space and staff space.” Now families have couches that pull out into sleeping spaces. They also have drawers, linens and pillows. When they’re not resting, they can use computers with Internet hook ups and watch television on a flat screen set. Since the West Tower opened last September, the staff has noticed that patients don’t seem to rely on them as much. “The call lights hardly go off,” Matthews said. “Patients and families hardly ever use the call lights because the combination of things just has really met their needs.”

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