Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago unveils $256 million patient tower

Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago recently unveiled its new $256 million patient tower. Several years in the making, it's an eight-story, 326,000-square-foot structure housing a new birthing center, operating rooms, women's health and critical care units.

Something that has been on the hospital's wish list for years was more critical care space. Notably, 72 critical care beds have been added. Advocate Christ CEO Kenneth Lukhard said that the 90 intensive care units in place had been running at nearly 100 percent capacity for some time.

"Christ has historically had a lack of capacity here," said Lukhard. "We've turned away thousands and thousands of patients we couldn't get into the hospital. So the first big challenge was to add critical care beds."

The 7th and 8th floors house the intensive care unit and cardiovascular thoracic intensive care unit, respectively, with two bariatric rooms and four isolation rooms on each floor. All rooms have frequently used items nearby for nurses' convenience, and all are private for patients, with headwalls designed to accommodate more medical procedures at the patients' bedsides. The ICU rooms are equipped with cameras that allow staff to monitor the rhythms, hemodynamics and test results of patients and to intervene when need be.

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"The second objective was bringing our women's services into the 21st century," said Lukhard. "The old one was built 40 years ago, and as much as you tried to modernize it, you just couldn't. We needed a new home for that."

The new home for labor and delivery is on the second floor of the patient tower, and like the ICUs, it's made a significant leap in technological capability. Three surgical lights in the C-section suites can be adjusted for maximum visibility, an anesthesia boom containing medical gases and electrical outlets are suspended from the ceiling, and private recovery rooms allow a mother and her newborn to spend time together recuperating.

The sixth-floor postpartum area, meanwhile, features wall-mounted equipment for pediatricians and a family lounge area.

"A good friend of ours just delivered here a few weeks ago," said Lukhard. "They hadn't been to the campus for a long time, and they were startled by the change. They parked in the new garage on a very, very cold day, came across the heated skybridge and came right to the labor and delivery floor. We did that on purpose, to make it easy for moms and loved ones to access that quickly and easily."

The family camped out in the lounge/waiting area in comfort until the baby was born, said Lukhard.

"They came away from that experience saying, 'My goodness, it really couldn't have been any better.'"

The design of the tower was facilitated in part by CannonDesign, a global design firm based in Chicago, which utilized an Integrated Lean Project Delivery model to conceptualize and build the structure.

In an ILPD model, trade partners are engaged in the design process from day one to optimize cost and efficiency.

"The intent is that everyone comes to the table earlier in the design process because you want to develop as much value for the project as you can early on," said CannonDesign principal Greg Heiser. "So we got a lot more ideas and concepts, and then had input from the contractors much earlier than what it would have been in the traditional format. You're taking the design piece and integrating it with the people who are actually going to be installing it."

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Heiser said there were a number of challenges in the construction of the patient tower, which was unveiled January 10, though the main one was coming in on budget. With the project paid for through cash and tax-exempt debt, meeting that budgetary goal was paramount.

The team was successful in doing so, said Heiser, and in addition to being to accommodate more patients, the hospital should expect savings in other ways.

"It's going to save them in energy costs," said Heiser. "It's also using 28 percent less water than a typical hospital of this scale.

"In terms of energy savings, we really had a focused effort to bring natural daylight to not only the rooms, but to caregivers," he said, "because what we've found is that there's a direct correlation between associate satisfaction and the amount of daylight they see."

But the biggest benefit, maintained Lukhard, is the capacity to treat those who come to the ER doors. Traditionally, the ER had to go on bypass -- diverting ambulances to other hospitals when it no longer had the capacity to admit patients (though walk-ins and those in need of urgent care were still treated). Now, much of that pressure has lifted.

"It's been a staggering relief for the campus, and for the community, because the community wants to come here," said Lukhard.

Twitter: @JELagasse