E70 – From Vision to Activation: Engaging Every Role in Change Management

As healthcare campuses expand to meet growing community demand, understanding how existing facilities perform in practice is essential to making informed, future-ready design decisions. Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) provides a critical feedback loop, allowing organizations to assess how spatial design impacts staff workflows, safety, environmental comfort, and overall operational performance. This session presents findings from a comprehensive, multi-method POE conducted at UNC Johnston Health and demonstrates how the results directly informed planning priorities for campus expansion and renovation efforts.

The POE evaluated five clinical departments—Labor & Delivery, Postpartum, ICU & PCU, Med-Surg, and Nursery—using staff surveys, walkthroughs, spatial analysis, and open-ended feedback. Across departments, findings revealed consistent themes related to staff work area functionality, visibility and adjacency for patient monitoring, adequacy of support spaces, and the impact of storage, equipment placement, and circulation on workflow efficiency. While patient room size and overall unit layout were frequently cited as strengths, staff satisfaction was negatively affected by undersized nurse stations, limited charting privacy, poorly located restrooms, inadequate staff amenities, and inconsistent zoning of clean and soiled supplies.

Department-specific insights highlighted how localized design decisions can have system-wide operational consequences. In Labor & Delivery and Postpartum units, nurse station configuration, lighting quality, and charting orientation influenced teamwork and patient visibility. In ICU, PCU, and Med-Surg units, staff amenities, equipment access, pneumatic tube placement, and lift availability affected efficiency, safety, and staff well-being. In the Nursery, the square footage and outdated infrastructure constrained limited clinical functionality and emergency preparedness.

The presentation translates these findings into actionable design strategies, illustrating how POE-informed recommendations—such as optimizing staff work zones, improving storage and equipment planning, enhancing staff amenities, and clarifying circulation—can improve performance while supporting future growth. 

How can healthcare environments be both universally healing and deeply reflective of the communities they serve? This session explores a community-imprint approach to healthcare design developed for the new Vista Pavilion at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon. OHSU’s executive leadership challenged the project team to create a bespoke yet inclusive environment that reflects the identity of place, elevates under-represented voices, and demonstrates the University’s commitment to the greater community and advancement of care.

Moving beyond traditional community engagement, the team incorporated design equity principles, evidence-based strategies and brain science to create a rigorous, repeatable framework for gathering valuable insights through surveys, mock-ups, and multiple feedback forums with patients, caregivers, and researchers. These insights directly shaped the space program, layout, operations, and aesthetic, ensuring the environment felt welcoming, safe, and restorative.

The result, validated through post-occupancy evaluations, demonstrates how authentic community voice can drive organizational value and meaningful outcomes that benefit all. Attendees will learn practical strategies for embedding equity, research, and community insight into healthcare design to create environments that truly reflect the people they serve.

Hospitals are expanding to the edges of their campuses at the same time communities are demanding greater environmental responsibility, public access to open space, and resilience to extreme weather. These pressures often create friction between program growth, climate response, and community context.

This session demonstrates how those tensions became design drivers for the new R.M. Schulze Family Heart and Stroke Critical Care Center at NCH in Naples, Florida.

Through early and sustained engagement with city leaders and the public, the hospital and design team redefined the campus boundary in alignment with the city’s comprehensive plan. By consolidating cardiovascular services into a single addition to the main hospital, the project improved clinical adjacencies and patient care while reducing overall footprint and preserving land for expanded public outdoor amenities.

Panelists from the hospital and design team will share how climate, context, and program were addressed as interconnected forces—informing site strategy, building performance, and the threshold between campus and community. Attendees will see how resiliency measures, land-use decisions, and specialty service planning can work together to create a hospital building that is both high-performing and community-integrated.

Participants will leave with a replicable framework for turning common campus constraints into opportunities for better healthcare environments.