HOSPITAL REDEVELOPMENT
Jan Kroman
Jan Kroman is a Principal with Rockliff Pierzchajlo Kroman (RPK) Architects, which has been creating diverse architectural projects throughout Western Canada and its territories for the past 55 years, with a focus on civic projects, healthcare, long-term care, and socially responsible housing. He has extensive international and local experience, having worked for renowned design firms in Holland, Japan, Toronto, and Calgary. The practice says he ‘excels in balancing design intent with scheduling and fiscal constraints throughout all project phases’.
The exterior walls that form the courtyards are clad in copper, an acknowledgment of the chapel demolished to accommodate the department.
for success, but also removed costly and time-consuming barriers, mitigated risk, and recognised opportunities with work execution to benefit the client and end-users. Overall, through these means, the project was successfully delivered on time, while also allowing for a planned and effective facility turnover to AHS and Covenant Health. The existing Emergency Department was cramped, with a single overcrowded waiting room – a space that patients and their families would often enter multiple times (for example for triage, registration, waiting) throughout their visit. The need to streamline and avoid this type of patient cycling became a guiding principle in the new department’s design. Working with the user group and functional programmer, Resources Management Consultants (Alberta), RPK’s design team developed a model that promoted constant flow. Amalgamating lean
Above left: Opened in November 2023, the expanded Emergency Department at Misericordia Community Hospital is three times the size of the original department.
Above: The ED’s configuration means that patients potentially only have to ‘touch down’ once (if at all, depending on acuity) – at the arrival/triage area, and then move into a corresponding pod where, at an internal waiting area, they can start to receive care.
Left: The new ED features 60 treatment spaces, boosting the facility’s capacity to help reduce waiting times and improve the patient experience.
ideology and clinical service delivery best practices, and considering a patient-centred care philosophy, the department was designed so that patients are constantly progressing in their convalescence. The goal was that patients should always feel as though they are moving forward toward the next step, both physically, and in terms of their recovery. This philosophy manifested itself, in part, through the formalisation of five pods – intake and assessment, general treatment, mental health, clinical decision unit, and acute – responding to varying levels of patient acuity. Internal waiting areas were also developed within each area. Fundamentally, this configuration means that patients potentially only have to ‘touch down’ once (if at all, depending on acuity) – at the arrival/triage area, and then move into a corresponding pod where, at an internal waiting area, they can start to receive care prior to proceeding into an examination or procedure space. From the examination room, patients progress forward, either leaving the Emergency Department, or being admitted to an applicable hospital department. In the case of the largest department with the least acute cases (intake and assessment), there is another lounge for patients that may be waiting on diagnostic results prior to discharge. Of additional note is the incorporation of emergency medical services (EMS) stretcher bays on the perimeter of the intake and assessment waiting room, connecting EMS teams and their patients directly into the flow of the department.
Carefully designed patient arrival As part of the constant flow philosophy, the patient arrival area was carefully designed, restructuring all requisite elements. Like all Emergency Departments, the space contains triage, registration, a volunteer welcome station,
38 Health Estate Journal February 2025
RPK Architects
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