BSA LifeStructures’ Indianapolis office had a great opportunity to tour the newest healthcare facility in the area: St. Vincent Fishers Hospital. The project is located about 20 minutes from our Indianapolis office and presented a great opportunity for people who weren’t involved in the project to tour the facility. It also gave the project team an opportunity to share the story behind the hospital’s design.

St. Vincent Fishers Hospital strikes a balance between comfort and functionality. The...

• Less than six inches thick
• Lightweight and...

Southern Illinois has a brand new full-service hospital that will offer advanced care and improved patient safety to the region. The 382,000 square foot Good Samaritan Regional Health Center in Mt. Vernon, Ill., was designed by BSA LifeStructures and features private patient rooms, advanced nurse care stations and convenient outpatient services within walking distance of the hospital.

The 134-bed replacement facility for St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Incorporated advances patient safety and care by...

Good design hinges on the discovery phase – or pre-design – growing to understand the site, program and spirit of the project. Before a single line is drawn all project goals and objectives are understood and a plan to create a building that responds to function, emotion and aesthetics are put in place. When the design team at BSA LifeStructures started to plan the Marie Yeager Cancer Center, they wanted to combine the latest oncology services with an environment that responded to the lake-side...

Ask yourself the following questions: What would happen to patients and staff if your hospital’s electricity went out for an hour, a day or a week? What would you do if an infectious and deadly disease started affecting the patients and staff in the hospital at an alarming rate? What would be your response to rising flood waters around your hospital?   

Hospitals need to be able to operate during the worst of conditions. They serve patients that are not capable of healing at home. By the nature...

Healthcare executives across the country are facing questions on how their organization can improve patient satisfaction and, as a result, scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. The importance of patient satisfaction results have evolved since the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—better known as healthcare reform—which affects hospitals’ reimbursement partly based on scores they receive on the HCAHPS....

BSA LifeStructures, a nationally recognized architecture and engineering firm specializing in healing, learning and discovery, and Messer Construction Co., a construction manager and general contractor providing leadership for complex commercial building projects, ceremonially broke ground on Indiana University’s Neurosciences Research Building in Indianapolis. The 137,000-square-foot facility will provide research space for a broad range of neuroscience research and is anticipated to...

Recently much of the country has been experiencing a relentless heat wave. Fortunately, most people in America live and work in conditioned spaces that offer a welcome “synthetic environment.” The majority of devices that tend to increase our quality of life, everything from refrigerators to laptops, also require their own synthetic environments to function optimally. For instance, a refrigerator absorbs heat from inside of the unit and expels it out into your kitchen, removing enough heat...

Previous posts (see "Making Healing Safe at Night") by my colleagues have referenced operational and planning solutions to help improve caregiver functions at night. There are also engineering components that help create a successful night-time healing environment for patients and caregivers.

The environmental systems, like lighting and air conditioning, in a healthcare facility are abundant and very complex. They are designed to facilitate patient and staff safety, and promote healing. However,...

It's low tide at 10 p.m. on the nursing unit, the lights are softened, and noise and staffing are at a minimum. The quiet environment and lack of stimulation is exactly what the patients need to rest and promote healing. But the non-stimulating environment is the opposite of what nurses and caregivers who work at night need to be alert and safe.

With more than 30% of healthcare workers on the night shift, often working 12-hour shifts, attention is being paid to factors that contribute to medical...

Recently, while checking out at the local supermarket I was overwhelmed by the array of tabloid and magazine publications positioned for the last minute sale. What did strike me was Esquire Magazine’s Summer Style Spectacular. For five bucks this would give me a vision of that lean and mean stylish look that might make me more attractive when calling on future clients. Other than Esquire’s Summer Style Spectacular (Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Prada, Brunello Cucinelli, who are these guys...

Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, Indiana broke ground on the BEACON Project – a $109 million patient tower addition and renovation. The project consists of a new five-story, 200,000 square foot, 120-bed inpatient tower and the redesign of the existing healthcare facility.

The inpatient tower features the Cardiac Center of Excellence, a state-of-the-art cardiology unit, complete with a standard and a hybrid catheterization laboratory. The facility also boasts improved spaces for orthopedics...

In my previous post I described the design commissioning process and the two documents used in the process: the Basis of Design (BOD), the “what,” and the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR), the “how.” These documents allow the owner and the design team to be aware of the requirements and expectations for the project. 

In this post, I will discuss the contents of the Basis of Design. The BOD is a compilation of the design criteria (the “what”) that will be used throughout the design process....