From the April 12, 2002 print edition

Developing concept, impact before going to the drawing board

Troy May

Before jumping into designing its $200 million hospital, the executive team at El Camino Hospital took time off to exercise. And helping them was a company that has a semiconductor manufacturer, a retail giant and Walt Disney Co. among its clients.

Hospital construction is expected to boom in the next decade, as hospitals across California comply with state requirements for earthquake retrofitting.

To meet such a mandate, El Camino Hospital needs to replace its 40-year-old facility. Lee Domanico, hospital CEO, wanted to do something great: to merge the hospital into the larger community by offering services ranging from a health spa to high quality food services and health care information.

"We want to create a campus environment where people come when they are sick or well," adds Ken King, vice president of facility services at El Camino.

But the hospital's executive team had vague ideas about what they wanted in the new hospital and how to implement its vision. So it hired Strategos.

The Menlo Park consulting company conducted brainstorming sessions that involved a series of exercises aimed to generate creative ideas. In theory, once the ideas were created and defined, and industry trends explained and understood, the executive team would be better prepared to work with architects.

"I felt this was important to broaden our horizons on what might be possible," says Mr. Domanico. "We wanted to make sure we thought outside the box so we could design the hospital of the future for our community."

The team worked throughout a series of exercises to identify the impediments to doing what they wanted in health care -- and then list all they wanted for health care if those impediments didn't exist. During the five-day session: "We came up with a list of 400 ideas of what we want," says Mr. Domanico.

Strategos has worked with big companies to foster innovations in construction design, products and services such as Applied Materials Inc., Sears and Disney -- the latter in its early design phase of Celebration Health, a health care facility developed by Florida Hospital and Disney.

Mr. King, who visited the Orlando, Fla.-based hospital last month, says the architect normally conducts a few pre-design sessions with hospital management, but not to the same depth as Strategos. After sessions with Strategos, the hospital's management team was better prepared to articulate to architects what it wanted in the new hospital.

El Camino's wish list of improvements center on better medical care and creating a pleasing environment.

Ann Fyfe, vice president of business development at the hospital, says El Camino needs to be more customer-service oriented, making sure patients and their visitors are in a pleasant environment. Often, visitors stand outside a patient's room because there isn't enough room to move. A new hospital design could include more sitting space, she says.

Food service needs improvement as well, the hospital team notes. Patients who don't have dietary requirements should be able to order the food they want, Ms. Fyfe says. That would require a different design for the kitchen.

El Camino wants to create the most effective work space for patients, doctors and nurses in different care services. That would call for clustered care services, where heart, cancer or orthopedics patients would be situated in one area.

Hospital design should conform with the increasing outpatient care services as well. Mike Cornell, director at Strategos, says when patients are waiting in the lobby, it helps that they see staff working to care for the next patient.

To that end, an innovative design would include the use of glass walls -- giving patients, visitors and staff a sense of openness while maintaining a patient's privacy, Mr. Cornell says.

Industries such as health care and corporate offices should follow the lead of the retail industry, which has become the most innovative with its space plan and design, says Mr. Cornell. Retailers, especially high-end ones, he says, are able to generate a mood among customers by way of space design.

"Doing pre-design can get stuff anchored in the business strategy," he says.

TROY MAY covers health care and health sciences for the Business Journal. MIKE CORNELL, now a founding partner at Incline Innovation, continues to work with El Camino Hospital on innovating their approach to delivering health care and related services.

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