CannonDesign and Studio Five Architects have completed the design for the University of Minnesota Health’s Clinics & Surgery Center located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota Health Clinics and Surgery Center. The outpatient center is a destination ambulatory care center designed to elevate an inter-professional care delivery model while providing an entirely new type of patient experience that introduces improved care delivery models, patient flows and turnaround of outpatient procedures.

The five-story, 342,000 sf outpatient center in Minneapolis, MN is uniquely designed with innovative ideas pulled from other consumer industries including retail and air travel to orchestrate a patient experience that promotes personalization, convenience and the elimination of touchpoints. The facility is also powerfully efficient – allowing M Health to accommodate twice as many patients as it could with its previous facility, with far fewer exam rooms.

Key examples of the Clinics and Surgery Center’s cross-market influences include:

Inspired by Retail Design and specifically Apple Stores, the Clinics and Surgery Center features no formal check-in or check-out areas. Instead, patients are greeted by a staff member with a mobile device capable of checking them in, filling out health forms, finding their exam room and scheduling future visits.

Modeled after the check-in procedures for airlines, M Health’s new facility offers patients’ technologically-advanced check-in solutions they can use from home to eliminate the need for a formal check-in process.

M Health also leveraged contemporary workplace strategies in the redesign. In lieu of space allocated to private offices that tend to be empty up to 90% of the time, the new facility features touchdown spaces and enclosed offices – all of which can be reserved for pieces of time, but are not designated for one individual. This allowed underutilized space to be reallocated toward collaborative and social staff areas which take advantage of abundant daylight and views of the campus.

The Clinics and Surgery Center also outlines a new architectural brand for M Health. Brick and terracotta on the exterior complement the local architectural landscape and native geology. Inside, patterns of travertine stone and glass panels allude to the exterior, and materials and planes are applied in a way that brings visual cohesion to the massive amount of activity taking place in the building. Color is used strategically throughout the space and in the furniture to identify clinic entry and neighborhoods in support of intuitive wayfinding. The artwork in the facility comes from local artists who submitted designs that were consistent with the building’s architecture and then selected via a competitive process.

Architects: CannonDesign and Studio Five Architects
Photography: James Steinkamp Photography, Craig Dugan Photography