Spectrum Health 80 and 125 Bed Continuing & Long Term Care Facilities

About the project/client:Spectrum Health is West Michigan’s largest, most experienced provider of long-term acute, rehabilitative, skilled nursing, residential and home care. In the 1990’s Spectrum acquired a building from Kent County, which became the home of one of their rehabilitation and nursing centers. This aging structure was designed as a hospital but not as a nursing home but has served an incredibly valuable purpose for an exceedingly long time. With constructing a new center, Spectrum Health leadership prioritized a home-like environment and committed resources to provide the highest quality of care by developing new facilities to serve acute-care, sub-acute rehabilitation (SAR) and the long-term care (LTC) population. Through charrette and visioning exercises with Progressive AE, Spectrum Health discovered a single large building wouldn't work for their care delivery goal of a human-scale and nurturing atmosphere for the patients and residents, and the health system chose to construct two smaller scale facilities in the community.ObjectivesThe goal was to enhance resident medical conditions and stay with a comfortable, appealing, and healing environment allowing flexibility in decision-making from personal comfort in space to dining preferences - contributing to reduced recovery time of LTC patients, improving SAR patients care progress, and enhancing an empathetic experience for patients and families. We also wanted to:

• Replace the existing aged facility
• Split the projects into two long-term care types, one for short-term rehabilitation and one for long-term care
• Provide a more home-like environment than the current center
• Increase referrals for Sub Acute Rehab (SAR) service
• Create a long-term sustainable business model as evidenced by quality, people, and cost outcomes of care

OutcomesWe accomplished the objectives above by:

• Allowing residents to have more control over their stay through control of lighting, HVAC, and food-nutrition options
• Creating spaces to support the idea of hospitality or home away from home (i.e., desks built into the room allows patients to personalize their space and have a place to do hobbies, work, etc.)
• Designing flexible therapy spaces to meet the ever-changing variety of patients’ needs
• Ensuring that space is appropriate for all generations
• Providing appropriate environments for positive distraction
• Patient recovery will be enhanced by a natural setting with wetlands providing comfortable, appealing, and healing spaces. The site contains walking paths for light exercise and rehab.
• Interior design elements are meant to emphasize the feeling of home