Construction is complete on the new Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) at Western Regional Medical Center in Goodyear, Arizona. Designed by the Tulsa, Oklahoma, office of PSA-Dewberry, the 212,000-square-foot hospital reflects the latest concepts in specialized care facilities and supports the CTCA mission of providing patient-centered, integrated care.
CTCA at Western Regional Medical Center is among the first in the nation to feature intensive care unit (ICU)-capable inpatient rooms called "multi-organizational service units." The architecture team coordinated extensively with the Arizona Department of Health Services on the design of the spaces, which required the agency to update its standards. The multi-organizational service units eliminate the need to transfer patients from room to room as their condition changes. The rooms transform around patients to provide an ICU level of care. Nursing services are decentralized to work stations located immediately outside each patient room, enabling nursing care to be adjusted based upon the acuity of the patient.
During design, PSA-Dewberry's team met regularly with administrators, department heads, and patients through a series of patient focus group meetings. Patients and their families were empowered with establishing design criteria that they believed would be critical to their own satisfaction and healthy outcome, resulting in such features as larger patient rooms and streamlined clinical configurations. The design team also worked with hospital staff to conduct "lean thinking" exercises that would test the efficiency of the hospital and reveal strategies that would improve throughput and reduce travel distances for patients and staff.
"At other facilities, patients visiting the clinic move from the waiting room to various exam rooms multiple times a day to see different providers," says Elizabeth Acord, director of lean operations for CTCA at Western Regional Medical Center. "On an average day, a patient who has visits scheduled with their care team--including a medical oncologist, naturopathic physician, nutritionist, and mind-body medicine--would travel 320 steps.
"At Western, the clinic was conceptually and architecturally designed so that the patient is literally surrounded by a team of care providers who come to the patient instead of the patient coming to them," Acord adds. "Appointments are scheduled so that the patient stays in one exam room, increasing communication between providers and decreasing patient steps to 86 steps, or a 75% improvement. As a result, our patients wait less and when they don't feel well they are not asked to move around and sit in waiting rooms."
Design of the new hospital was based on the similarly sized Southwestern Regional Medical Center in Tulsa, which CTCA opened in 2005. The PSA-Dewberry-led team also incorporated breakthrough strategies in lean operations in the Tulsa facility, strategizing design concepts that have enabled clinical and diagnostic teams to bring services and treatment to the patient as much as possible, rather than requiring patients to travel throughout the building for various aspects of their treatment. Both the Southwestern Regional Medical Center and the Western Regional Medical Center also feature on-site residential accommodations to allow outpatients to remain on campus with their families for extended treatment phases.
The new complex in Goodyear includes 14 of the multi-organizational service units along with surgical suites, state-of-the-art radiation therapy, infusion, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation and physical therapy, imaging, and on-site residential accommodations for patients and their families. The patient rooms are also designed for family-centered care, with a family zone that allows for overnight stays.
With a patient base that consists largely of outpatients, a spacious clinic provides consultation and examination rooms specifically for medical oncology, radiation oncology, PNI, internal medicine, pulmonary function testing, pain management, surgery, endoscopy, mind/body medicine, nutrition, naturopathic medicine, and additional practices. This "home base" offers patients easy access to scheduling, registration, and individual care management teams.
CTCA at Western Regional Medical Center is located on a 25-acre site, and has been master planned and designed in anticipation of future expansion that would tie into the pre-planned infrastructure and require minimal impact on ongoing patient care.
The project was completed on a fast-track basis, with overlapping design and construction spanning just 19 months. In addition to PSA-Dewberry, design and construction team members included the Stonebridge Group of Tulsa for owner's representation; Tempe, Arizona-based Architectural Nexus; Tulsa-based Wallace Engineering for structural engineering; Flynt and Kallenberger of Tulsa for mechanical/electrical engineering; Evans Kuhn and Associates of Phoenix for site/civil engineering; and Okland Construction of Tempe for construction management.
About Cancer Treatment Centers of America
Founded in 1988, Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) provides a comprehensive, patient-centered treatment model that fully integrates traditional, state-of-the-art medical treatments with scientifically supported complementary therapies such as nutrition, naturopathic medicine, psychological counseling, physical therapy and spiritual support to meet the special, whole-person needs of advanced stage cancer patients. With a network of cancer treatment hospitals and community oncology programs in Arizona, Illinois, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Washington, CTCA encourages patients and their families to participate in treatment decisions with its Patient Empowerment MedicineSM mode.