Healing by Design - University of Arkansas Medical Sciences

	The hospital's lobby features soothing earth tones.

A spacious lobby featuring natural light and Arkansas limestone gives UAMS’ new hospital the feel of an upscale hotel as it invites visitors into a place of comfort, hope and healing.

The architects, led by Joe Stanley of Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects of Little Rock, worked hard for that.

“The entry is full of natural light, so it’s a much happier, cheerier, brighter place that will carry through as you go up through the floors,” Stanley said. “Studies prove it improves and enhances the healing process, the healing environment.”

The 540,000-square-foot UAMS hospital reflects Arkansas at every turn, not just the limestone columns. All the interior design, colors and finishes are intended to bring Arkansas to mind, Stanley said.

“We used the theme of the regions of Arkansas; there is a whole palate of colors and materials that suggest The Natural State,” he said. They include earth tones, the blues and greens of water and forests, Hot Springs crystals and natural wood.

But the major showpiece is the all private patient rooms – whether it’s in the Emergency Department, pre-operative and post-operative areas or as an inpatient.

“That’s the biggest, No. 1 thing,” said Bob Goza, UAMS director of clinical facilities planning, who oversaw the design of the 10-story building.
Patient privacy also is enhanced by having separate patient and public elevators.

Unlike before, patients can go straight to radiology and physical therapy from their rooms without traveling the hospital’s public corridors, Goza said.

Larger rooms allow for the latest medical equipment, and a sleeper sofa in each room enables loved ones to stay with the patient, he said.

Goza credited the design firm HKS of Dallas, as well as project architects Polk Stanley and The Wilcox Group of Little Rock for being responsive to input from 15 user groups that included doctors, nurses, housekeeping and nutrition services, among others.

The groups of six to eight people met regularly with an HKS designer and an architect. The groups represented nursing units, the intensive care unit, the neonatal intensive care unit, surgery, laboratory services and the Emergency Department. A clinical facilities planning group of more than 20 people kept campus leadership informed.

Staff input was important, for example, in the location of the Emergency Department. At first it was set back, but the medical team asked that it be moved to the street for better access.

Mock patient rooms were built, and yellow “sticky” notes were provided for staff to write suggestions on and attach to areas in the room.

“It really brought that design a long way,” Goza said. He noted one change requested by nurses resulted in observation stations being moved from the foot of patient beds to the head so nurses could read the monitors more easily.

The building is graced with 26 works of fine art displayed in the public areas of the new hospital through the generosity of patrons, said Sue Williamson, senior director of Development and Alumni Affairs. Jackye and Curtis Finch, of Little Rock, are chairing the Art Committee, which has a long-range goal of securing high-quality fine art and sculpture for the facility. Curtis Finch is treasurer of the UAMS Foundation Fund Board.

Stanley said the timetable and complexity of the project made it the most challenging of his career, which has included being coordinating architect on the Clinton Presidential Library. “Most people thought we could never do it in less than five years,” he said of the project, which included an attached parking deck, a campus energy plant and a new State Hospital that UAMS built in return for land the old State Hospital occupied. The job was made smoother with the help of CDI Contractors and Baldwin & Shell Construction Co., Stanley said.

“All members of the design team wanted to conceive and develop and deliver to UAMS the best health care facility we could using state-of-the-art knowledge and technology and the latest building and engineering systems,” Stanley said.

Other notable features of the hospital are a very clear entry, a convenient drive for pick up and drop off and a parking deck attached to the building.

“It’s a modernist building, very clean and contemporary. The lines are simple, there’s not a lot of fussiness to it,” Stanley said. It’s intentionally understated, he said, because the real focus is reserved for the high-tech health care taking place on the inside that is bringing life-saving treatments to patients.