San Francisco Citizen

The Future is coming to Mission Bay and this is what it will look like. Get all the deets below.

Hurray!

• Private room. Nearly all patient rooms will be private, with the exception of intensive care nurseries designed for multiple births.
• Spacious bathroom with double doors. Every UCSF patient room will have its own large bathroom with a wide entry door.
• Adaptable head wall. Patient rooms will include an optimized boom mount on the ceiling that will increase room flexibility and open up more floor space.
• Hand-sanitizer pump. Hand-washing sinks will be located upon the entrance to each room.
• Sound-absorbing ceiling tiles. The accessible ceiling tiles in each room are designed to absorb sound and can be cleaned easily.
• Soothing music. Patients will be able to personalize their music selections; music will not be piped in.
• A view of nature. Rooms will offer a range of views, from gardens to the San Francisco Bay to the ballpark.
• Light-filled window. Every room will include a huge window.
• Carpeting. Rubber floors will promote infection control, reduce noise and offer increased comfort for patients and staff.

(Source: Mary Phillips, project manager for interior design for Mission Bay Hospitals Project)

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“Patient rooms in the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay, including this acute care patient room at the future women’s specialty hospital, are designed to maximize comfort, efficiency and safety.

The new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is planned as a shining example of evidence-based hospital design, an increasingly prevalent trend built on research suggesting that design can improve health outcomes by increasing safety and reducing stress among patients, their families and hospital staff.

Evidence-based design concepts recently reached a huge new audience when O, The Oprah Magazine ran an article in its September issue highlighting the “Fable Hospital 2.0,” a conceptual patient room designed by a team of researchers, architects and health care experts as an ideal facility.

Features of UCSF’s 289-bed Mission Bay hospital complex — including private rooms and bathrooms for nearly all patients; individualized lighting, temperature and music controls; and large windows offering views of serene outdoor spaces — match up almost exactly with those of the Fable Hospital. The most notable exception is UCSF’s decision not to use carpeting in patient rooms, a feature of the Fable room that was deemed an infection risk. Instead, UCSF’s floors will be made of rubber, which absorbs noise and can be cleaned using fewer chemicals than vinyl flooring.

Such decisions about the new women’s, children’s and cancer hospitals slated to open in early 2015 are the result of an extensive, highly collaborative process that engaged leading architects teams of university staff and caregivers, and patients and their families.

“Overall, the facilities will be spectacular, contemporary, appealing and sophisticated,” said Cindy Lima, executive director of the Mission Bay Hospitals Project. “Patients, families and staff alike will benefit from a beautiful and soothing environment that I hope will feel more like a sun-drenched retreat than a hospital.”

Lima was quick to point out that “while stunning, the design is simple and the buildings are highly efficient.”

“We didn’t want people to end up feeling we’d been lavish and irresponsible with resources,” echoed Dr. Elena Gates, chief of the UCSF Division of General Gynecology, who has been involved in the planning process since the beginning. “It’s amazing what one can do while also being quite reasonable.”

More deets after the jump

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