For its first freestanding healthcare campus in more than 30 years, the Baylor Health Care System wanted to develop a new medical complex in Plano that would offer patients an experience similar to that of a fine hotel rather than a hospital. The challenge was to design the Plano campus with flexibility to meet unforeseen future needs with subsequent adaptations while delivering facilities for Baylor to provide today’s patients with a superior level of service. To date, three of four phases have been completed, encompassing more than 683,000 square feet of healthcare facilities on a 29.4-acre site.
The initial phase of Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano included a 342,956-square-foot hospital, an eight-story medical office building of 191,000 square feet, a six-level parking garage accommodating 1,080 vehicles, additional surface parking, and related site improvements. A detached 12,000-square-foot central energy plant serves the entire hospital campus and is located along the site’s southern edge and away from zones identified in the master plan for future expansion of facilities.
The project’s second phase added a Heart Hospital and another parking garage. Page helped Baylor position the new Heart Hospital for best current and future connectivity to the core of the campus.
The third phase brought a second Medical Office Building, encompassing 149,510 square feet on seven floors, along with a supporting six-level parking structure for 1,075 vehicles that connects to the first parking garage. Also, additional surface parking was placed immediately north of the hospital and west of the office building and parking structure. The fourth phase is master planned for the construction of another 160-bed tower with diagnostic, treatment, and ancillary support services.
The planning and design team directed attention toward creating an environment focused on healing and simultaneously enhancing the patient experience. From the onset, Page worked with its client to reimagine that experience by infusing the hospital setting with hotel-like amenities. The hospitality experience begins upon entering the hospital and culminates in the upper guest floors of the hospital, which initially opened with 96-beds but was expanded to 160 beds in the project’s third phase. Continuing the focus on creating a comprehensively serene environment to promote healing, guest rooms have been designed with high ceilings and windows to allow ample daylight and add visual interest to the perspective from the bed. Each floor comprises 32 private guest rooms with centrally located family amenities and support services. This configuration allows each floor’s two 16-bed units to operate independently, which affords flexibility to close a partial unit if patient population decreases.
Thanks to a floor plan that narrows the distance between guest rooms and centralized support services, caregivers never travel more than 25 steps to help a patient.
To allow for flexibility should demand increase in the future, Page designed the Emergency Department to be expanded by taking over adjacent “soft space” now occupied by Physical Medicine. Time-saving features of the Emergency Department include an elevator that goes directly to the peri-operative suite on the second floor. There’s also a corridor shared with the Imaging Department, which allows for quick access to diagnostics. The fully digital Imaging Department has space for two CTs, two MRIs, Interventional Radiology and Vascular studies, Nuclear Medicine, four Rad/RF, and three Ultrasound rooms.
Located on the hospital’s second level, the primary treatment area provides 12 state-of-the-art Operating Rooms, each sized between 600 and 880 square feet to meet the specific requirements for general surgery and open-heart surgery, as well as specialty orthopedic and neurology cases. Eight ORs are fully integrated with voice activation capability and video portability that links to the Baylor University Medical Center Campus in downtown Dallas. The second floor also includes three Cardiac Cath Labs, an EP Lab, a GI Suite, a Pain Management Suite, and private prep and recovery positions for day patients.
