HOSPITAL DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
Heart and lung hospital will continue to innovate
On 1 May last year the new Royal Papworth Hospital, a striking heart-shaped building located next to the city’s famous Addenbrooke’s Hospital on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, began accepting its first patients. Like the pioneering early 20th-century facility it replaces, it will be the UK’s leading heart and lung hospital, treating over 100,000 patients annually, and – as one of six specialist UK cardiothoracic transplant centres – is expected to undertake more heart, heart-lung, and lung transplants than any of the other five adult such centres. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, recently visited the new hospital to find out more.
The new Royal Papworth Hospital, which cost £160 million to build, and a further £40 m to equip and fit out, was designed and built by a PFI consortium led by main contractor, Skanska Construction, work having begun on site in March 2015 and been completed a year late in the Spring of last year. One of the reasons for the new hospital’s late completion was the need for the main contractor to remove and replace the original cladding, which was identified as combustible – and thus unsuitable for use on a healthcare facility – following advice from the Department of Health in the wake of June 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire.
A striking first impression
Driving around the perimeter road outside Addenbrooke’s, and turning the corner to first view the new heart and lung hospital, one is immediately struck by its heart- shaped design – which reflects its primary purpose as one of the UK’s leading heart and lung hospitals. Antoinette Reis, a Medical planner at scheme architects, HOK, who worked on the project for nine years right up to the hospital’s completion – and thus feels she knows the building intimately – was one of those I met and ‘interviewed’ about the impressive new facility. She told me she felt the hospital’s futuristic oval/heart shape particularly stood out on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, particularly given that many of the newer surrounding buildings have a more ‘conventional’ rectangular form. Once inside the light and airy main atrium, a notable feature is the sizeable transparent glass (ETFE) concave roof above, which brings light flooding in, and affords views to the upper floors. The atrium itself exudes a feeling of spaciousness and calm.
Speeding check-in
Also located on the ground floor are the main reception; a series of automated check-in touchscreens; an attractive
The north entrance to the new Royal Papworth Hospital.
restaurant with glazed frontage; indoor and outdoor seating, and views onto a landscaped area/pond. There is also a shop; a discrete private entrance door leading to a lift for those visiting patients in the first floor Critical Care Unit; ‘back- of-house’ administrative offices for Trust personnel; a multi-faith area/chapel; a Discharge Lounge; a day ward, and, to the right of ‘Reception’, the entrance to the Outpatients’ Department. Distinctly different to many ‘typical’ such departments, ‘Outpatients’ at the new Royal Papworth Hospital has its own central atrium. Neatly arranged around the central area and perimeter are patient seating, medical gas outlets for patients arriving with portable oxygen tanks but requiring an alternative supply while awaiting their appointment, and three separate, but identical, clinics. Each has 10 consult/exam rooms, with the appointment system designed to speed patient flow and reduce waiting times. The high ceiling and extensive open space afford a considerably less constricted
and more relaxed feel than seen in many such departments.
A ‘one-stop-shop’ department Antoinette Reis said: “We designed the Outpatients’ Department from the outset to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ – with patients either seen as quickly as possible in a consult/exam room and discharged with a treatment or a follow-up plan, or, if considered clinically necessary, admitted to an inpatient ward. One of the key design principles was that patients arriving would face a simple choice – either proceed straight to Outpatients’ for their appointment, or check in for inpatient admission.” The hospital’s three 82-bedded inpatient floors – numbers 3, 4, and 5 – each accommodate two 41- bedded, south and north wards, with the single en-suite rooms arranged around the oval shape, all with views to the exterior. The hospital’s first floor Critical Care Unit accommodates a further 46 single-bed rooms, designed, like the ‘standard’ inpatient bedrooms, to ensure
January 2020 Health Estate Journal 43
The Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
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