Jersey Shore University Medical Center honored Gold by inaugural Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Awards at HCD Expo

Photo courtesy of Woodruff Brown-Architectural-Photography.

Jersey Shore University Medical Center was honored Nov. 11 with a Gold Award at the inaugural Evidence-Based Design Touchstone Awards at the Healthcare Design Expo & Conference in Orlando, Fla.

Members of the EYP Health team joined The Center for Health Design to celebrate the win.

The $300 million expansion and renovation project — “Transforming Care: The New Jersey Shore” — is a Center for Health Design Pebble Project featuring a 144-bed patient care pavilion with all-private rooms and an innovative model of nursing care.

The award recognizes the use of an evidence-based design process in the pursuit of increasing value, improving outcomes, and engaging stakeholders. Submissions were judged based upon their achievement across three touchstones of the EBD process:

• Collaborate: Submissions must demonstrate interdisciplinary team and stakeholder education, engagement and development.
• Evaluate: Submissions must demonstrate the extent to which research was found, evaluated, and applied to link design to outcomes and measurement of results.
• Share: Submissions must demonstrate how the EBD process was applied and how the knowledge gained was disseminated, captured, and has the potential for application to future projects.

An expert panel consisting of key industry stakeholders — academics, architects, designers, healthcare executives, planners, facility executives, patient and family advisors, and researchers reviewed each submission.

Jurors noted that “This team demonstrated some clear strengths related to EBD. Most notable were the degree of owner engagement and support of EBD, the degree that the team made EBD ‘their own,’ and the candid and complete way that the owner shared its business case details with the extended team. The team also did outstanding work preparing research and sharing after the project was completed.”

“Receiving a Gold designation in the inaugural EBD Touchstone Awards for Jersey Shore University Medical Center (JSUMC) is a true honor for the entire team. As a legacy EBD practice, EYP Health (formerly WHR Architects) found an ideal client in JSUMC, whose enlightened and engaged leadership was committed to transforming the whole patient experience and the healthcare workplace setting,” said Laurie Waggener, RRT, CHID, IIDA, EDAC, EYP Health’s Director of Research.  “From the initial visioning sessions through design and delivery to post-occupancy evaluations, the full team collaborated closely to articulate the project vision and goals, to carry out the critical research, and to measure the results.”

“JSUMC’s dedication to the EBD process, including becoming a Pebble Project, set the stage for innovation at multiple levels throughout the design and for measurement,” said Tushar Gupta, AIA, NCARB, EYP Health Principal and JSUMC Designer.  “The positive response to the project from patients, staff and community, are testament to the value of EBD in transforming care.”

“Our Transforming Care project sought to combine the most advanced medicine with exceptional care and thoughtful design to create a patient experience that is second-to-none,” says Kenneth N. Sable, M.D., MBA, FACEP, president of Hackensack Meridian Health Jersey Shore University Medical Center and K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital in Neptune, NJ. “Team members were involved throughout the planning process, working hand-in-hand with the design team to ensure that best practices and workflow efficiencies were considered, designing each detail around the patient and visitor experience.”

Since completing the Transforming Care project eight years ago, the medical center has seen distinct benefits of evidence-based design. “The private room, neighborhood concept has resulted in improved patient satisfaction, efficiency of care delivery for the nursing team, and infection control improvements. The thoughtful elements that were implemented in this project have had a tremendous positive impact for the patient experience and clinical delivery of care, and have even served as a model for other health care facilities’ expansion projects,” notes Dr. Sable.

“It was truly exciting to see this inaugural class of EBD Touchstone Award recipients recognized at the Healthcare Design Expo & Conference.  As we continue to evolve our evidence-based design program, this award program allows us to recognize projects that are true examples of using the EBD process,” stated Debra Levin, EDAC, President and CEO of The Center. “These awards highlight projects that demonstrate the deepest use and application of evidence-based design that contribute knowledge to the industry while addressing today’s most urgent and challenging healthcare design issues.”

Pioneers in the field of evidenced -based design, EYP Health continues to pursue research on a range of healthcare topics with the strong support of the EYP whose robust research programs encompass building science, energy, living-learning, STEM, and workplace design as well as healthcare.