E4H Environments for Health Architecture was tasked with upgrading UMass Memorial Medical Center H8 Medical Surgical Nursing Unit and Compounding Pharmacy in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Improvements planned for this new Medical Surgical Nursing unit include twenty-four (24) new private patient rooms, which includes a VIP/ Palliative Care suite and patient room and an Airborne Infection Isolation (AII) patient room. Additionally, improvements include, staff support spaces, a staff lounge, (2) modern centralized team stations, required clinical support spaces, and a centrally located compounding pharmacy.

Beds at the Memorial Campus are not being fully utilized in many multi-bedded rooms as patients’ needs for private beds become more evident. UMass Medical’s focus to keep quality and safety satisfaction high requires additional private rooms. Creating higher percentage of private beds at Memorial better serves the population that results from elective surgery cases at Memorial Hospital and the increase number of patients requiring beds with isolation. The increased demand for more private beds at University campus will relieve the backups in the ED and limit incidents of Code Help. Currently there is a high frequency of code help which often will eventually trigger the emergency disaster plan.

UMass Memorial Medical Center has experienced a 8.6 % increase YTD in acute care admissions over FY 15 resulting in continual high Emergency Department boarding hours. Through simulation we have identified the need for 50 acute care beds to maintain an 85% occupancy rate that by industry standard is the rate which enables positive patient flow. Our current medical surgical occupancy rate at our University campus is 93.2%. Establishing an additional 28-33 beds on the medical surgical unit on H8 at the University campus would improve patient flow, quality of care, and improve the patient and staff experience.

This project adds a new (16) bed medical surgical nursing unit and renovates an existing (8) bed medical surgical nursing unit. This (16) bed unit plus the (8) bed renovation unit accounts for 24 of the 28-33 beds needed to support the specialized services of HVAC, medical gas upgrades needed, and clinical support spaces needed.

Architect: E4H Environments for Health Architecture
Photography: Jonathan Tadiello