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Medical industry rolls out red-carpet treatment
By Molly Parker
Staff Writer
A few years ago, 11 doctors put their M.D.-certified brains together and decided to build a freestanding imaging center that would provide the type of five-star service they found lacking in most Lowcountry medical facilities.
The idea wasn’t only to equip it with the latest scanning technology, though it certainly offers that, but also to build the type of radiology facility that puts the patient’s comfort first, said Michael Garovich, president of Mount Pleasant-based Imaging Specialists of Charleston, which officially opened its doors in late January.
“If you go to a nice hotel like the Ritz-Carlton, you go in and ask for something and they say, ‘My pleasure.’ It’s very service oriented. In medicine, as a woman told me recently, she went in for a regular exam and had to wait 25 minutes before someone even spoke to her. Finally, a worker who wasn’t very friendly pulled back a sliding glass door and asked ‘Can I help you?’ ” recalled Garovich, a neuroradiologist.
“It would have been so much nicer if she would have smiled and said ‘The doctor will be a little behind.’ That doesn’t cost you any more money; that’s just good service.”
Taking a cue from the “service with a smile”-oriented retail sector, hospitals and doctors’ offices in the Lowcountry are sporting a new look inside and out, with features ranging from high-dollar, awe-inspiring architectural designs all the way down to cozy details such as high-speed Internet and valet parking.
In doing so, the medical profession is abandoning those boxy, dimly lit facilities and leaving the crotchety doctor persona to reruns of Ted Danson’s “Becker.”
For the nation’s most well-mannered city, it’s a fitting trend, though a movement toward patient-centered hospital design is not unique to the Lowcountry.
“For a long time it was considered cutting-edge. Now we’re seeing more and more hospitals embracing those philosophies and implementing them in both design and operation,” said Anjali Joseph, director of research for the Center for Health Design, a California-based education and advocacy organization.
“We’ve always been a strong advocate of the idea that it’s not enough to just build a pretty hospital with more light and a garden outside, it’s also about the kind of care that’s provided. For a hospital to be truly patient-centered, it often requires a change in philosophy for the staff.”
Pampered patients
Garovich and his partners are taking that mission so seriously that patients will be treated “almost to the point where they are pampered,” he said.
And why shouldn’t they, Garovich said, when the people walking into the clinic will be seeking answers to some of life’s scariest questions: Will this year’s breast exam turn up abnormal? Is a brain tumor causing these headaches? Am I developing a neurological disorder?
“The facility speaks a thousand words,” he said.
Worth noting, the medical office houses the only open 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging system in the Southeast. The machine is considered cutting-edge in the industry because it is stronger and faster than older models, and also is more spacious, which helps with both claustrophobic and larger patients, Garovich said.
Germany-based Siemens selected the Mount Pleasant office as one of only four primary locations to showcase the new technology.
Impressive, certainly, but so are the not-so-flashy features, from the hardwood floors to comfortable chairs, promises of short waits and dressing rooms equipped with sliding doors instead of curtains. Patients also will be pleased, he said, to find a robe hanging on the wall in place of those roundly despised skimpy paper gowns that leave your backside vulnerable to a breeze.
In many ways, it is patients themselves, empowered by the Internet and more determined than ever to take ownership of their health needs, who are driving this new era in medical design and service.
“Patients just aren’t willing to put up with the status quo,” said Doug Bowling, vice president for system development at Roper St. Francis. “And we’re more conscientious as an industry. It works better for the patients and the staff.”
The ‘mall approach’
At Roper St. Francis, this trend is most evident in the addition of a new meditation garden at the Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital in West Ashley. Set to open this year, the project includes a labyrinth and camellia and prayer gardens with a cascading water fountain.
Not your typical medical devices.
“Our goal is to create a special outdoor space for quiet reflection and prayer,” Sanford Byers of Byers Design Group LLC, the lead architect, said in a statement announcing the December groundbreaking.
On an even larger scale, Roper is incorporating the patient-driven movement into the design of its new Mount Pleasant Hospital set to open November 2010.
The “mall approach,” Bowling said, is an idea that came from a focus group called together to gather input for the blueprints.
“We had an elderly woman say, ‘Why isn’t it a hospital can’t be marked clear like when I go to a shopping mall? I know if I want to go to Nordstrom, I can see the sign and park right out front, and I don’t have to wander through the whole mall to find what I’m looking for,’ ” he said.
Along with ample parking near the clearly marked entrances, anyone walking the hallways of the 600-foot-long hospital will have a view outside from the emergency department on the south end to the medical offices on the other end.
“When people have a visual reference to the outside, they tend not to get lost,” Bowling said.
‘Healing hospitality’
Similarly, the Medical University of South Carolina cites the mix of cutting-edge medical technology with amenities such as Lowcountry art, palm trees, valet parking and rooms overlooking the Ashley River as the alchemy behind its newest campus addition, the Ashley River Tower. The 641,000-square-foot cardiovascular and digestive disease care facility opened in February. “Healing hospitality,” the university calls it.
The $275 million sail-inspired architectural marvel, built from 10.7 million pounds of structural steel and 80.7 million pounds of concrete, includes three interconnected buildings: a four-story diagnosis and treatment facility, a seven-story patient tower for recovery and an atrium for patients, families and employees.
Physicians are connected at every point of clinical care. Surgeons can view images on flat-screen monitors, and a patient’s electronic medical record — lab results, scanned images — can be projected onto a monitor in the operating room.
“The design is much more efficient for patients and doctors,” said MUSC President Raymond Greenberg. Just as important, he said, the design allows for the easy adaptation of new medical innovations and shifting trends. “I believe we’re on the cusp of transforming the way health care is delivered.”
Writer Lisa Lopez Snyder contributed to this report.
Molly Parker is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her directly at mparker@scbiznews.com.
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