Top Blog Posts in April

By: BSA LifeStructures in the News

Research facility Design

We are starting a new feature on this blog where we highlight the most popular posts from the previous month. Below you will find a short summary and links to the posts that grabbed reader’s attention during April.
 
This month’s topics range from factors that are driving medical office building design to the perks of installing a rain garden.
 
Delivering healthcare at a lower cost is the name of the game for the healthcare industry and some...
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BIM Takes Facility Management Into a New Dimension

By: Mark Handy

Healthcare Facility Design

A lot of attention has been paid to the benefits of building information modeling (BIM) in the design community, and rightly so. BIM enables architecture, engineering, interiors, construction and the building’s owners to share live facility data throughout the life of a project. BIM can also be used for facility management purposes that create dynamic reporting and tracking of a facility’s assets, space and operations planning. BIM’s ability to create close cross-discipline relationships and...

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Permeable Pavers Pave the Way for Sustainable Site Design

By: Dan Adler

Cancer Center Design

The economic realities of today’s marketplace are forcing many organizations to identify new sustainable measures that extend the life of their facility and offer cost savings. One site planning and design solution that can help healthcare, higher education and research facilities save on operational costs are permeable pavers. These pavers are made of sustainable materials and have a base that collects water below the surface. 
 
Permeable pavers offer benefits as an attractive amenity...
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Vance and Press Ganey to Speak at Center for Health Design Workshop

By: BSA LifeStructures in the News

Gary Vance, BSA LifeStructures' National Director for Healthcare, and two scientists from Press Ganey, the industry leader in healthcare performance improvement, will speak on the connection between patient satisfaction and the built environment at the Center for Health Design’s Pebble in Practice Workshop on May 10. The workshop features more than 17 presentations that will discuss how the physical environment affects clinical and financial outcomes at healthcare facilities.

Over 65% of patient...

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The Aesthetic Bent of the Millennial Generation

By: Chris Lake

Healthcare Architecture

As younger generations become more frequent consumers of the healthcare system, there are certain basics they expect from those healthcare systems and the professionals that treat them. The primary thing they expect is good care from well trained staff. What administrators don't expect is that their perception of equal care across providers has driven a marketing and PR frenzy among hospitals competing for the almighty dollar.
 
What these hospitals/systems are beginning to recognize (hopefully) is...
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Knowing the Difference Between a Skills Lab and a Simulation Lab

By: Geoff Lisle

Allied Health Facility Design

Many people believe that a skills lab and a simulation lab are one in the same. However, there are specific design solutions and objectives for each space that cater to different curriculum and programming for allied health education. Many of the simulation centers designed by BSA LifeStructures incorporate both skills and simulation labs to suit the varying curriculum needs of the school. Marian University’s Michael A. Evans Center for Health Sciences, Indiana University School of Medicine’s...
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St. Vincent Fishers Hospital Will Serve Growing Indiana Community

By: BSA LifeStructures in the News

Healthcare Architecture

St. Vincent Fishers Hospital, a 110,000 square foot inpatient expansion to St. Vincent Medical Center Northeast, is finished and began treating patients on April 8. Located in Fishers, Ind., the hospital serves a community that has experienced explosive growth over the last 15 years. The 50-bed inpatient expansion was designed by BSA LifeStructures.
 
The design of St. Vincent Fishers Hospital focuses on improving the patient care experience for patients and staff. The expansion includes 30...
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BSA LifeStructures and Franciscan St. Francis Win AIA Indianapolis Honor Award

By: BSA LifeStructures in the News

Hospital Architecture

BSA LifeStructures’ expansion to Franciscan St. Francis Health’s Indianapolis Campus has won an AIA Indianapolis Honor Award at the 2013 Excellence in Architecture Awards. The 221-bed acute care bed tower expands the Indianapolis campus and consolidates key existing service lines from two campuses into one state-of-the-art facility. The cost-effective strategy and design solution creates efficiencies and positions the hospital to be more responsive to changes in care delivery in the future. The...
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ENERGY STAR: Quickly and Easily

By: John Sauer

Sustainable Design Architects

How does your healthcare facility’s energy performance compare to similar facilities? How do you know whether investing money in energy saving retrofits is worth it? Is there a simple way to find out the answers to these questions? Consider ENERGY STAR.
 
ENERGY STAR is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) voluntary program that helps businesses and individuals save money and protect the climate through advanced energy efficiency.
 
The ENERGY STAR program was established by the EPA in...
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Healthcare Design Magazine - Creating an Environment that Engages Employees

By: Terry Thurston

Healthcare Architecture

With the recent attention to patient satisfaction scores and HCAHPS survey results, we have learned a lot about ways in which the healthcare environment can influence patient experience. 
 
We also know through research by the Gallup organization, Press Ganey, and others that satisfied employees are engaged, and that engaged employees deliver care resulting in higher patient satisfaction. It makes sense, right? 
 
If I'm treated or served by someone who's sincerely engaged, relates with me as a...
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The 6 Factors Driving Medical Office Building Development

By: Robert Snyder

Hospital Planning and Design

Delivering healthcare at a lower cost is the name of the game for the healthcare industry. Healthcare design architects know that one of our client’s biggest problems is finding the most cost effective way to provide healthcare, while adhering to changes in delivery and philosophy under healthcare reform.
 
Healthcare architects have already opened the eyes of some organizations to one of the easiest ways to cut costs - change your building’s design. Specifically, start shifting your focus...
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Four Reasons to Master Plan Now

By: Gary Vance

Healthcare Facility Design

As our healthcare clients are exposed to unprecedented change and reform in 2013, they have realized there is cost pressure in everything they do. As a result, they are planning and evaluating all aspects of their operations.This planning should include campus and facility master planning to understand the changing healthcare landscape.
 
A hospital’s physical plant plays an important role in many cost decisions. For healthcare organizations to fully understand and control the cost of their...
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5 Ways a Rain Garden Can Improve Your Facility

By: Dan Adler

Higher Education Facility Design

BSA LifeStructures has been designing healthcare, higher education and research facilities with rain gardens as a stormwater best management practice (BMP) for the last decade. Not only do rain gardens add attractiveness and flavor to the landscape, they actually offer quite a few tangible benefits for a facility. On a couple of occasions, though, our architects and engineers have brought up the prospect of implementing rain gardens to the look of blank stares on the faces of our clients. They...
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How to Design a Hospital that Embraces Patients

By: Carl Johnson

Healthcare Facility Design

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...

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Designing for High-Demand Healthcare Fields

By: Miranda Beystehner

Allied Health Facility Design

Joliet Junior College’s new Health Professions Center hosted a grand opening on March 12, 2013, that showcased the flexible nature of the building’s learning and simulation environments. The grand opening gave the college an ideal opportunity to showcase their new building to the public and constituents. The new facility gives the college a state-of-the-art building that incorporates technology and simulation spaces to educate the healthcare professional of tomorrow.

The Health Professions Center ...

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Healthcare Design Magazine - The Glass is Half Full

By: Gary Vance

Hospital Design and Planning

 
The seasoned veterans of the healthcare planning and design industry have a very good feeling about the challenges we face in our industry. Of course, there are a myriad of challenges in areas that design professionals cannot control—reimbursement and healthcare reform to name a few. 
 
However, these should not be seen as difficult years, but rather years of opportunity as we make the necessary adjustments and changes to the healthcare system so it becomes sustainable for many years.
 
It may seem...
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4 Ways That Gardens Improve Healing

By: Dan Adler

Healthcare Architecture

The therapeutic value of a healthcare facility can be enhanced with the introduction of healing gardens that are planted around the facility. A healing garden is dynamic by nature, changing with the seasons and with the daily cycles of nature. Healing gardens combine lush plantings of flowers and multi-seasonal plants with walking paths that offer comfortable seating for users to relax. There are different types of healing gardens that feature a mix of plants and layouts to calm the patient and...
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Healthcare Design Magazine - Trending the Present and Future

By: John Sauer

Healthcare Facility Design

In a perfect world, all new healthcare buildings would operate exactly as designed and would stay that way for the life of the facility. However, in the non-perfect world we live in, most buildings don't operate as designed.
 
Is this the fault of the engineer, the contractor, or some other entity? All new healthcare buildings are complex and one of a kind—a prototype. There are hundreds of people involved at all levels. There are thousands of moving parts, featuring dynamic systems that are...
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Vance Elected into American Institute of Architect's College of Fellows

By: BSA LifeStructures in the News

BSA LifeStructures' Gary Vance, FAIA, FACHA, LEED AP, has been elected into the prestigious American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows in recognition of his healthcare design leadership and contribution to the evolution of the architectural practice. 
 
Vance ─ National Director of Healthcare at BSA LifeStructures in Indianapolis ─ is the only Indiana architect to be elevated to the College of Fellows in 2013, a distinction that’s awarded to less than 3 percent of the nearly 80,000...
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Breaking Down the Different Types of Green Roofs

By: Dan Adler

Higher Education Facility Green Roof

As I mentioned in my previous post, green roofs offer a ton of functional benefits for your building and the environment. Green roofs reduce energy use; improve stormwater and air quality; reduce noise levels and add years to the life of your roof. Most people probably aren’t aware that there are different types of green roofs that cater to different climates and goals. The two main roof garden types are extensive and intensive.
 
Extensive Green Roofs
  • Less than six inches thick
  • Lightweight and...
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