Interiors Consulting Neonatal Intensive Care Design
Think What’s Possible
With roots extending back to a two-person partnership formed in 1898, Page is one of the most prolific and enduring architecture and engineering design practices. Page architects, engineers, interior designers, planners, strategic analysts and technical specialists provide services throughout the United States and abroad. Our diverse, international portfolio includes projects in the academic, advanced manufacturing, aviation, civic, corporate, government, hospitality, housing, healthcare, mission critical, and science and technology sectors.
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We focus on curating care with design that thinks as big as you through an inclusive, empathetic, curious, lean, and
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Prioritizing a client-first, person-centered design approach
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Embracing inquiry grounded in research
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Striving for continuous improvement
Forward-Thinking
Exploring what’s possible
Curating Care: Design that...
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Women’s & Children’s Health Design
Healthcare Facilities for women and children are very unique environments. Because they treat patients of varying ages and medical complexities, these facilities are put in precarious situations to balance the overwhelming nature of available treatments with the fear experienced by young patients and the joy of expectant parents. It is this paradox that makes designing health facilities for women and children such a challenge. Enhancing this complexity too, are the needs of the family who actually become an extension of the entire healing unit. During this trying time for all, making each family’s stay as pleasant as possible can positively impact the process of healing. These forces combine with the need to provide physicians, researchers, and other clinicians and support staff optimal places to work.
Design considerations of the physical environment for Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) shall be evaluated to support the clinicians providing advanced care for the most fragile newborns, while creating a home away from home to provide family-centered care. Our team understands the importance of the NICU environment on patients’ and families’ healing and outcomes. The patient is at the center of all decisions we make. Regardless of the conditions that bring them to the NICU, infants’ bodies are constantly stimulated by their surroundings, and we must understand that these surroundings can positively or negatively impact their healing and overall development. Planning for a NICU environment requires an in-depth understanding of neonatal services delivery and clinical processes as well as a dedicated focus on long-term growth and operational improvement. Our integrated approach to clinical planning ensures enhanced NICU environments can be achieved by means of facility renovations as successfully as a new build project.
Pediatric Health Leadership
Kurt Neubek FAIA, LEED AP, EDAC Healthcare Sector Leader
Mark Vaughan AIA, FACHA Senior Medical Planner
Beth Carroll AIA, ACHA, LEED AP, EDAC Senior Medical Planner
Creating an environment that provides for the patient to be first in a sustained engagement for respect and compassion to achieve the best experience and outcome for the patient and their family.
Family Comfort
Elements to allow for families to stay comfortable and informed to engage in the patient’s care and an environment that allows for privacy and respite.
Clinician Support
Providing spaces that effectively support the spectrum of the clinicians’ work and supports their well-being: physical, cognitive, and emotional needs.
Multi-Disciplinary Care
Areas that offer team collaboration and communication for multi-disciplinary professionals to coordinate and deliver comprehensive care.
Evidence Based Design
Utilizing research that has generated data to inform design concepts to create a more effective healing environment.
Design Applications
§ Open bay versus single rooms
§ Design for multiples
§ Design for couplet care
§ Design for multiple acuity levels
§ Clinician workspaces
§ Clinician respite
§ Family accommodations
§ Family respite
Key Elements
§ Safety, security, and infection control
§ Sounds and light levels
§ Systems and infrastructure
§ Improve air quality
§ Use of materials to reduce exposure to toxins
§ Patient / family privacy
§ Technology applications for monitoring / communications
§ Wayfinding
§ Walking distances
§ Incorporate nature
§ Ease of access to supplies, charting, medication, and nourishment
§ Sleeping area for parents
§ Accommodations for breast milk pumping, storing, and feeding
Wellness Oriented
Incorporating biophilic design to leverage human connections with nature to improve wellness, reducing anxiety, stress, and pain.
Nutritional / Lactation Support
Offering healthy nutritional choices that are conveniently located while providing privacy and access for lactational support and education.
PATIENT CARE CONFIGURATION
The design for Levels II, III, and IV designated neonatal care has evolved from open bay nursery environments to the private room model. Evaluation of each type of environment should be considered during the early phases of design. Adjusting from open bay configuration to a private room model can be a major change in operational models for NICU departments. Understanding how the workflow and processes will adjust is important for all to collaborate for successful acclimation and adoption of new processes.
Family Accommodations Clinician Areas
Earlier NICU designs were open, allowing enhanced visibility to several patient stations from a single location. In recent years, open bay NICU’s have given way to private room designs that have many positive attributes. Noise and light levels are more easily controlled and can be specific to the infant’s needs at the time. Infection control issues are more easily dealt with in a private room setting along with security and safety related concerns. Most significant with the private room concept is the increased opportunity for the mother and family to be with the infant and provide for improved care and accommodations. Greater privacy allows for more enhanced motherbaby contact time, which is a critical factor in the healing process of the infant.
The NICU unit substantially changed as the single room concept evolved from open bay units. Larger rooms increase travel distances. Therefore, strategies should be developed to decentralize work areas for nursing staff and the multitude of specialty care providers that are involved in the care of patients in the NICU. Incorporating technology that provides NICU’s with alarm management solutions that eliminate audio alarms within the unit and notify staff directly when attention is needed.
Open Bay
§ Development of staff communication & interaction
§ Ability to monitor multiple patients
Single Room
§ Improve sleep
§ Increased privacy
§ Increased parental involvement
§ Improvement with infection control
§ Quieter staff environment lowers perception of fatigue and stress
Findings of Health Outcomes Related to Private Room Model
§ Fewer apnoeic events
§ Reduced nosocomial sepsis
§ Nutritional outcomes
§ Reduced LOS
§ Environmental control
§ Earlier transition to enteral feeding
§ Bonding & breastfeeding
§ Experience of first moments earlier
Neonatal Intensive Care Experience
Advocate Children’s Hospital
Advocate Christ Medical Center
Oak Lawn, Illinois
Level III NICU & Perinatal Center
16 Beds NICU - Phase I
42 Beds NICU - Phase 2
Advocate Children’s Hospital
Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital
Downers Grove, Illinois
20 Beds NICU
Baylor Scott and White
All Saints Medical Center
Paul and Judy Andrew’s Women’s Hospital
Fort Worth, Texas
63 Beds - NICU and CCU
Broward Health
Chris Evert Children’s Hospital
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI)
St. Luke’s Health
Houston, Texas
Henderson Women’s Center and NICU
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia
27 Beds - CICU / 27 Beds - Stepdown
CHRISTUS Children’s Hospital of San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas
20 Level IV - NICU
50 Level II and III Private - NICU
4 Transitional Care
CHRISTUS Santa Rosa
San Antonio, Texas
Children’s Hospital & Women’s Center
CHRISTUS St. Frances Cabrini Hospital
Alexandria, Louisiana
Women’s & Children’s Hospital w/ED
Houston Methodist San Jacinto
Baytown, Texas
Houston Methodist Sugarland Hospital
Sugarland, Texas
Sweetwater Pavilion LDR and NICU
Houston Methodist The Woodlands
Childbirth Center
Houston, Texas
20 Beds - NICU
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Nadia’s Room
Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies
Saint Francis Hospital
Houston Methodist West Hospital
Childbirth Center
Houston, Texas
20 Beds - NICU
Nemours Children’s Hospital
Orlando, Florida
10 Beds - PICU / 16 Beds - NICU
Norman Regional Hospital Norman, Oklahoma
Order of Saint Frances
Children’s Hospital of Illinois
Peoria, Illinois
60 Private Beds - NICU
Orlando Regional Health System
Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies
Orlando, Florida
30 Beds - CCU
Phoebe Putney Health System
Main Campus Albany, GA
Saint Francis Children’s Hospital
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
Tulsa, Oklahoma
50 Beds - NICU
Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin Austin, Texas
UCHealth Poudre Valley Hospital Fort Collins, Colorado
32-Bed NICU Single Family Unit Level IIIA NICU
UCHealth Highlands Ranch Hospital
Highlands Ranch, Colorado
Birth Center and Level III NICU
UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital Longmont, Colorado
Birth Center and Level II NICU
University of Chicago Hospitals Comer
Children’s Hospital Chicago, Illinois
47 Beds - NICU
Wake Forest University
Brenner Children’s Hospital
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
47 Beds - NICU
Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center Andrews Women’s Hospital
Baylor Scott & White Medical Center Lakeway
University of Chicago Hospitals, Comer Children’s
Children’s Hospital of Illinois at OSF Saint Francis
Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women and Babies in Orlando, Florida, has a long-standing history of quality care for women and infants. When the existing 112 bed NICU required expansion, the design team at Page was brought in to create a new Level II NICU on an existing 20,000-square-foot shell floor. The new unit provides 30 all-private patient rooms, each with a shower, bathroom, and sleeping area for families to room-in. Designed with flexibility in mind, these rooms are also sized for adult care should the need arise in the future. Some rooms can become suites for multiples while others can accommodate both a post-partum mother and baby for palliative care needs.
Families and visitors, arriving through the existing public elevators, are greeted by a smiling face at the central reception area. Once on unit, visitors are directed to the appropriate pod. Each ten-bed pod is developed as a “neighborhood,” encompassing both family amenities and critical staff and support spaces.
Within each room, accommodations for two parents to sleep are provided with a pull-out love seat. Wireless internet, charging stations, and a small TV are also provided to make their stay more comfortable. A bedside glider and privacy curtain allow parents to spend quality time with their infants through kangaroo care. Staff members are close by, located at substations outside each room. A visitor’s lounge, waiting area, and seating alcoves are also provided to give family members a place of respite without leaving the unit. The warm, rich interior provides a comforting environment that caters to people of all ages.
Expanding on the philosophy of “kids come first” at The Children’s Hospital at Saint Francis Hospital, Page designed a 50-bed neonatal intensive care unit to replace the existing open-bay facility. The new layout employs a private room model, dramatically decreasing noise levels, while providing family amenities and appropriate space at the bedside. Six semi-private and 38 private rooms are arranged in pods to control ambient noise, improve access to supplies, and limit traffic through care areas.
Embracing the role of the parent in newborn care, each room has a pull-out sofa and mother’s niche with a glider, breast-milk refrigerator, privacy curtain for nursing, drawers for infant clothing, and shelving for room personalization. Dimmable wall sconces and soft, indirect lighting create a soothing environment. The seasons theme and a more sophisticated interpretation of the primary color palette cater to the parents while maintaining continuity with the existing building.
Windows provide an important psychological benefit and well-designed daylighting is the most desirable illumination for nearly all care-giving tasks, including charting and evaluation of infant skin tone. In keeping with this concept, every infant bed has access to well-controlled natural light. Every patient room is equipped with staff work-zones and sub-charting stations located outside each pair of rooms. Primary team work stations are highlighted under cloud-like soffits and starry-sky domes. A central corridor facilitates the delivery of bulk services, out of view of families and visitors.
Formed in 1998 through the merger of Egleston Children’s Health Care System and Scottish Rite Medical Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta traces its roots to the founding of Scottish Rite Convalescent Home for Crippled Children in 1915 and the opening of Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children in 1928. Now comprising three hospitals and 27 urgent care centers and neighborhood clinics, Children’s Healthcare is one of the nation’s highest-rated children’s hospitals. So when it launched the expansion and renovation of 255-bed Egleston Hospital (473,800 square feet) and 250-bed Scottish Rite Hospital (392,000 square feet), it asked the design team to consolidate dozens of specialty clinics and introduce new and enlarged facilities within a family-friendly environment.
As patients and visitors happily discover, the new interiors introduce bright and playful spaces rich in nature-themed education and entertainment. Because the storytelling walls, murals, and other special installations offer interactive and digital features, children relate to them enthusiastically, finding them as calming and therapeutic as they are engaging and distracting. Highlights include electronic feature walls in the main lobbies, video aquarium walls incorporating IMAX® film footage, Nadia’s Room, a home-like facility easing patients’ transition from hospital care, and the Stair Gym, a six-story staircase designed as a symbolic and therapeutic mountain climb.
When Page began planning the Houston Methodist West Hospital Childbirth Center for the new hospital, the operational model for the department had not yet been determined. To support the client’s strategy of starting small while remaining flexible, the Page team relied on their knowledge and proven processes to provide the best solutions to help the Childbirth Center respond to future, unknown needs and accommodate various operational models.
The first phase included 18 labor, delivery, recovery, and post-partum (LDRP) beds and eight dedicated post-partum beds – a model which allowed maximum flexibility to use the LDRP rooms as LDR or post-partum. The first phase of the Childbirth Center also included a 16-station well baby nursery and 14 private neonatal critical care or continuing care (NICU) rooms. Two sets of the NICU rooms include a movable partition between the rooms to provide an opportunity to convert the rooms to a larger space for twin babies, and for parents to share space in the private room setting.
The Phase II expansion of the Childbirth Center provides a total of 28 post-partum beds and 19 NICU beds, allowing the existing 18 LDRP rooms to convert to LDR rooms and functionally separating the LDR unit from the new post-partum unit.
University of Chicago Medicine
Comer Children’s Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
An esteemed provider of comprehensive, innovative medical care to children since 1930, the University of Chicago Medicine set a formidable goal for its new, 155-bed, six-floor, 242,000-square-foot Comer Children’s Hospital. The new facility creates an optimal setting for pediatric medicine’s rapidly advancing technologies through architecture that relates to the University’s dignified campus, and interior design that supports children and their families. As the striking results show, Comer’s designers met the challenge directly.
Thus, such advanced facilities as a 16-slice CT, state-of-the-art, network linked patient bedside monitors, HEPA filtration of indoor air, a 30-bed PICU, a 55-bed NICU, and six surgical suites with ORs exist alongside such child-centered features as patient rooms that accommodate family members and overnight stays, a family care center with private sleeping rooms and bathrooms, laundry and vending machines, a family kitchen, a family learning center, an outdoor playground with play equipment, and a central family playroom on the ground floor.
Staff Areas
Patient Family Services
Family Laundry and Vending
Neonatal Intensive Care
Children’s Hospital of Illinois at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center
For the Children’s Hospital of Illinois — a hospital-within-a hospital newly consolidated in an expansion — OSF Saint Francis Medical Center wanted a medical environment that was engaging and educational for children yet evocative of medical excellence for all patients and families.
The design team carefully considered the ways children respond to their environment — their line of sight is lower, scale of spaces and forms can impact them adversely, and the interesting use of clear, vibrant saturations of color can provide a positive distraction for adventurous minds. Visitors entering the hospital are greeted by a vibrant, full-spectrum color palette, which continues throughout the building in bold splashes of color that provide memorable wayfinding landmarks. The lobby includes a special waiting area for children with an interactive media system that allows them to manipulate projected digital images as if by magic. Child-height design features address children’s unique perspective on the world. Young children can peer through circular elements in decorative glass near the gift shop. Columns along the concourse of the admitting and diagnostic services waiting areas are wrapped in solid surface wall panels with raised images of animals — features that are not overt in the environment, but wait for children to discover them.
NICU FLOOR
Nemours Children’s Hospital
Pediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care Units, Orlando, Florida
Nemours Children’s Hospital brings a full spectrum of what’s possible in pediatric healthcare to Central Florida. Featuring the area’s only emergency department designed especially for children, the new facility offers care for everything from life’s little mishaps to big emergencies and long-term needs.
What can design do to create a unique healing environment and connect with the community?
Nemours Children’s Hospital hums with world-class medical technology, state-of-the-art equipment, and a family-focused environment. Nemours’ family-friendly design houses the ambulatory and acute care spaces for medical specialties in adjacent wings of the same floor with shared waiting spaces. Whether hospitalized or visiting a clinic, children see the same physicians and clinical staff. Familiar faces and continuity of care reassure both patients and parents.
Advocate Christ Medical Center
Neonatal Intensive Care Units
Multiple Locations, Illinois
PROJECT DETAILS
Project Size
Advocate Children’s Hospital
Advocate Christ Medical Center Level III NICU & Perinatal Center Oak Park, IL
41,880 Square Feet
16 NICU Beds - Phase I 42 NICU Beds - Phase 2
Advocate Children’s Hospital
Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital Downers Grove, IL
Poudre Valley Hospital is an existing 270-bed regional medical center located in Fort Collins, Colorado. As part of the University of Colorado Health system, the integration of academic medicine with a focus on community-based care enables the facility to provide superior care and service to the Northern Colorado area.
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit renovation project increases the capabilities for the existing Level III acuity NICU. The total scope of work is 24,080 square feet and will be completed in three separate phases. The existing NICU expands from a traditional openbay 19-bed unit to a 32-bed single family private room unit. The unit offers a mix of single patient rooms, twin rooms, and a transitional care room. The flexibility of accommodating a family with twins or triplets has been considered in the private room designs.
Located in the existing “E” building of the hospital, the first phase of the project includes the expansion of the existing unit into the adjacent vacant unit for the patient rooms and clinical support spaces, along with HVAC upgrades. The second phase includes the renovation of the existing NICU space into unit amenities for families and visitors as well as staff support spaces. Additionally, the public corridor and the unit entry will be remodeled during this phase. The third phase includes HVAC and architectural finishes upgrades in the C-Section operating rooms.
Level 2 at the Sweetwater Pavilion was renovated to a 12-bed labor and delivery suite with four private triage rooms, five antepartum rooms, three C-section rooms, and a 12-bed NICU. The renovation on level 3 is a 36-bed post-partum unit. The total square footage of the renovation is 61,570 square feet.
The south expansion is a three-story, 77,500-square-foot addition on the southwestern area of the building. The addition connects the existing Sweetwater Pavilion, MOB 2, and the Cancer Center. Level 1 includes a 12,000-square-foot breast center with the balance of the footprint dedicated to shell space. Level 2 of the South Expansion contains a C-section suite with four OR’s and a 24-bed NICU. Level 3 has a 12-bed GYN unit as well as a full-term nursery and a continuing care nursery.
A 25,000-square-foot single floor renovation of a community hospital where Page designed new LDRP, NCCU, C-section rooms and related support spaces. The LDRP phase opened before COVID-19 in 2019, and the NCCU phase opened during COVID-19 in late 2020.
The project renovated Level 2, including patient rooms, procedure rooms and support spaces. The suite includes 12 private LDRP rooms, eight neonatal ICU rooms, two C-section OR rooms, and one Family Transition Room. The MEP system and low voltage will be upgraded for code compliance. Construction work was phased to maintain patient care during construction.
“It’s going to be good that we can say we worked through this (pandemic) and have a finished project ready for our community at the end.”
Monte Bostwick, Market President & CEO, CHI St. Luke’s Health Memorial Hospital
Improving lives for generations to come, Highlands Ranch Hospital provides advanced health care and innovative medical treatments to its growing community. Featuring the UCHealth Birth Center, the state-of-the-art facilities bustle with activity and excitement, delivering an average of 2,000 babies a year.
The Hospital’s concept and design are unique, combining an in-patient hospital and outpatient services in a single building. The hospital’s Y-shaped footprint allows its programs to share a central lobby, elevators, and other amenities. And, with south Denver expected to grow 25% by 2025, the arms of the Y can extend outward for phased expansion.
A split-level entrance to Highlands Ranch’s light-filled atrium aligns with the site’s natural topography. Colorado Buff stone, brick, and wood-like metal panels combine with sleek metal and glass, inside and out, to create a facility with a clear Colorado identity.
Inside the high-tech, six-story building, patients and families come first. Parents of infants who need extra care and support can room in at the NICU. Personalized treatment plans are created through a partnership with UCHealth faculty and researchers. Nursing neighborhoods also ensure that patients receive round-the-clock attention.
Think high-tech, high-touch are buzzwords? A patient told reporters covering the hospital’s first anniversary that her doctor “held my hand during the darkest days I have ever experienced. Patients are the priority at Highlands Ranch Hospital.”
The hospital adjoins a public park that connects an adjacent retail development and several neighborhoods with the medical campus — bringing advanced, compassionate medical care to the community’s backyard.
