Boston Children’s Hospital excels in providing the highest quality of care for their patients. For more than a century, Shepley Bulfinch has partnered with Boston Children’s on a variety of projects, including several expansion buildings and multi-phased renovations. The new 11-story Hale Family Building, which anchors the most ambitious reimagining of its facilities, will address critical capacity needs and its delivery of high-level tertiary and quaternary care. By collocating the Benderson Family Heart Center within the building, the design will improve patient flow and operational efficiencies through patient, family and staff centered design.

Previously, the heart center had been spread across five different buildings throughout the Longwood campus. The new, integrated heart center consolidates cardiac services to form one of the largest pediatric heart centers in the United States. The facility increased capacity to meet the needs of current operations, while accommodating for anticipated future growth. The center offers comprehensive cardiovascular services that involve the departments of Cardiology, Cardiac Surgery, and Cardiac Anesthesia, and it provides both outpatient and inpatient services.

Our designers worked closely with the Boston Children’s team to implement various processes and research to inform the design in partnership with. During the master planning process, Shepley conducted a ‘shadowing exercise’ for the Heart Center whereby the team observed and documented day-to-day activities of the clinicians. The team found that with the current departments located in different buildings, there were limited opportunities for adjacencies, team collaboration, and spatial efficiency.

Photo courtesy of The Boston Globe

Additionally, a new interventional platform was developed to anticipate future disease treatment trends. Our team consulted a multi-disciplinary team of cardiac surgeons, interventional cardiologists, cardiac nurses, and all other supporting staff to ensure that the future interventional platform would accommodate the needs of various interdisciplinary operations and procedures. The guiding principles were established by the Heart Center’s Oversight Committee so that the patient-centered care remained at the heart of all decision making.

One significant process improvement of the new design includes all cardiac services that require use of anesthesia—including cardiac surgery, interventional cardiology, cardiac MRI, and procedure rooms for echocardiograms—being consolidated on one floor. Doing so will optimize staffing efficiencies, improve patient safety, and enhance interdisciplinary care capabilities. Under the new unified platform, physicians and staff from all of the Benderson Family Heart Center’s disciplines will work hand-in-hand to provide comprehensive cardiac care for patients at Boston Children’s.

The new inpatient units in the Hale Family Building are designed through the eyes of family members for them to remain actively engaged during hospitalization of their children with the focus on safety, quality and efficiency of care. Being a tertiary pediatric facility, the proportion of patients from outside the local area is relatively high, resulting in greater need for space at the bedside for families to stay and/or sleep. Inpatient cardiovascular patients are often some of the sickest patients, requiring high levels of intervention and care. The inpatient rooms are designed to facilitate urgent in-room procedures quickly, safely and efficiently. The beds can be rotated to any orientation within the rooms, accommodating any configuration of mobile equipment and providing space for caregivers. Outside each pair of patient rooms is a care provider zone that includes a staff observation station and supply cabinets for point-of-care delivery to the patient. The decentralized staff workstations help to maximize visibility and sightlines to patients. In addition to the vision control windows, other finishes within the rooms help the nursing staff assess the patient’s health. Clinicians are highly sensitized and trained to check for blue tones in a cardiovascular patient’s skin pallor; the room color palette intentionally does not include blue tones to decrease the chance of inaccurate assessments. The selection of light fixture types further assists the clinicians in quickly and efficiently assessing the patient’s appearance.

Boston Children’s strives to provide the highest quality patient- and family-centered care to all patients. Every detail is critical when designing a pediatric facility. Through the long-lasting partnership with Boston Children’s, Shepley Bulfinch has always worked to maintain a meticulous approach from listening to the staff’s expertise on facility operations to developing a deep understanding of patients, their families and staff’s needs. When planning and designing the relocation of the Heart Center, these were high priorities to ensure that the patients and their families are provided with a comfortable and adaptable experience while the staff is provided with a collaborative and supportive workplace. Relocating the Benderson Family Heart Center to the Hale Family Building supports the hospital’s mission to provide the highest quality of care for patients and families.