Authors:
Jason Costello, AIA, LEED AP ~ Principal & Partner, Margulies Perruzzi
Dr. Linda Lee ~ Medical Director of Endoscopy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Director of the National Pancreas Foundation Center for Treatment and Care of Pancreatic Cancer at BWH/DFCI, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Christopher C. Thompson, MD ~ Director of Endoscopy, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Co-Director, Center for Weight Management and Wellness; Director, Advanced Endoscopy Fellowship Program; and Professor, Harvard Medical School
Modernizing Today’s Endoscopy Suite to Meet Future Demands
The planning of an endoscopy unit focuses on three key areas:
- Procedure Rooms
- Scope Processing
- Pre- and Post-Patient Care
The project process begins by establishing quantity and type of procedure rooms based on the specific needs of the patient population. A patient volume analysis overlaid with procedure type allows the team to define the required number of procedure rooms, and to develop a space program that lists all the required support spaces (nurse stations, toilets, storage rooms, clean and soiled rooms, etc.) and their size to determine the area required to accommodate the future endoscopy suite. This area can then be used to identify lease space, construct a new building, or identify an area for renovation within the existing hospital or clinic. Once the location of the project is determined, the clinicians work with the architects to establish patient flow through the department and lay out the spaces. A series of meetings follows to review the details of the layout of each clinical space. For our purposes, our project focused on a phased renovation and expansion of an existing endoscopy suite.