In November, Stanford Health Care welcomed its first patients to its new, 824,000-square-foot facility. This new $2 billion, high-tech hospital boasts everything from more sunlight to a tech-driven environment that will help make health care professionals’ day-to-day jobs more efficient and provide the most streamlined patient care. It sounds like the hospital of the future.
On the tech front, new bedside technology allows patients to control everything from their window shades, room lighting, temperature, and entertainment. Alarms set to medical equipment are no longer audible in patients’ rooms; doctors and nurses now get alerts via hand-held device.
Robots will even be helping the staff and patients. The new hospital will use 23 automated delivery bots to transport packages, medical gas tanks, clean and dirty linens, and packages from the hospital to its loading dock a quarter-mile away.
When it comes to emergency care, all new surgical intensive care unit suites are offering more enhanced post-surgery care. Some of these suites also feature MRIs to give surgeons real-time views.
“We’ve created an environment to match the high caliber of the care they provide, while offering patients and families an atmosphere that has been designed to promote healing at every step,” said David Entwistle, president and CEO of Stanford Health Care, in the latest issue of Stanford Medicine magazine.
Visually, the hospital is also a mecca of arts and culture to keep patients, visitors, and workers stimulated beyond all the treatments and care. Inside, there are more than 400 pieces of art, and even some dedicated garden spaces for meditation.
And when it comes to food, employees have 7,700 more square feet of space to coordinate and prepare nearly 1,300 meals a day, and can accommodate as many as 100 various diets.
George Tingwald, administrative director of medical planning for the hospital, who also has a background in architecture, helped design the new hospital using. Technology was covered by Gary Fritz, Stanford’s vice president and chief of applications, while Alpa Vyas, vice president of patient care worked on crafting ways to balance the facility’s innovation with actual, human touch.
Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, called the hospital “a beautiful, serene setting for healing that is also an advanced incubator where we can cultivate our vision of precision health,” in the publication.
