Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

After nearly 120 years at the center of Pittsburgh’s medical and university hub in the Oakland neighborhood, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC will relocate in May 2009 to a new hospital and research campus in the city’s vibrant, Lawrenceville section.

The opportunity to build a new hospital came during a period of immense changes in hospital design that mirror new thinking in medical care and huge strides in medical technology. Fresh emphasis on principles like family-centered care and green design is now intrinsic to the design of modern hospitals, especially pediatric hospitals like Children’s.

Leading hospitals now combine technology with an awareness of the needs of families, communities and staff members to create quiet, paperless, aesthetically pleasing hospitals that afford easy access, incorporate nature, and offer homelike, family comforts.

Other hospitals aspire to include some of these elements in new and existing facilities. Children’s has incorporated all of them in the design of its new campus.

“The new Children’s Hospital represents a top-to-bottom application of the most forward-thinking design and technological and philosophical concepts in medicine,” says Roger A. Oxendale, Children’s President
and CEO.

Since 1926, Children’s Hospital has built an unprecedented track record as a national and international leader in pediatric medicine and medical research, while continually adding onto its core building in Oakland.

By the year 2000, the hospital’s rapidly increasing services and patient populations created the need to expand once again, and hospital leadership first contemplated making another addition to the Oakland campus.

But the Children’s Hospital merger with the larger University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) changed that. In 2002, UPMC’s acquisition of the property of the former St. Francis Medical Center, about two miles from Oakland in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood, presented Children’s with a golden opportunity.

Starting with a clean slate, Children’s rethought what a hospital could be, and combined new state-of-the art buildings in a complementary way with renovated, existing buildings. The result: A technologically advanced, family-centered, environmentally friendly, medical facility that would set a new standard for pediatric care.

First and Foremost, A Place For Kids and Families
The hospital campus has become an architectural tour stop even before its opening. Outside the new Children’s Hospital, one can see that it was designed for children. On the facade along Penn Avenue, striking bright colors — green, yellow, blue, red — are beautiful and pleasing to children.

Inside, it’s also a kids’ world. Bright colors and natural light are everywhere. Playrooms on every patient floor look out on the open space of the hospital’s “town center,” anchored by the four-story, Eat ’n Park Atrium on the sixth floor. Giant windows look out from the atrium onto the green terrace of the Howard Hanna Healing Garden, with a view of the Pittsburgh skyline beyond.

After dark is movie time. Kids can watch movies on a theater-size screen in the atrium with a state-of-the-art system carrying audio to every floor.

Every child is part of a family, and Children’s Hospital has long been committed to the bedrock principle of family-centered care. This is a broad and ever-evolving philosophy of modern pediatric medicine that places the needs and concerns of the entire family at the center of all services and interactions.
Family-centered care drives every aspect at the new hospital, and is thoroughly integrated into every level of design.

Several architects have described the new Children’s campus as having the best vehicular entry of any hospital in a foul-weather city, especially a densely populated northeastern city. Drivers reach the front doors and visitor entrance to the hospital facing Penn Avenue via a four-lane, covered driveway. The patient entrance to the Emergency Department (ED) is entirely separate from visitor entrances, ambulance entrances, and other services. An anxious parent bringing a child alone to the ED can park in short-term spaces next to the entrance and not worry about the car while getting the child inside.

Because ambulance entrances are separate from patient entrances, parents already experiencing the normal stress of a visit to the Emergency Department are spared the potential sight of an injured child being brought in by paramedics.

Green, Paperless, and Then Some
The family-centered philosophy complements other modern, design principles within Children’s Hospital. Private patient rooms with sleeping areas for families contribute to their privacy and comfort. And hallway observation windows make it possible to check on a patient without disturbing the family.

Children’s Hospital has long been a leader in patient safety initiatives, including designing the new hospital to be paperless. All medication orders, patient histories, and test results will be entered electronically. Making patient data immediately available contributes in great part to patient safety, and is environmentally friendly.

Green design principles are integrated into the hospital’s design, and dovetail with family-centered care at every level. Natural light fills the hospital from windows that cover every possible surface, reduce the need for electrical lighting, and contribute simultaneously to patient healing and peace of mind.

The windows also allow the hospital to take advantage of its location on a hill high above the Allegheny River, with sweeping views of green hills, church spires, and skyscrapers from downtown Pittsburgh to the East End.

The new Children’s campus is integrated into a dense urban environment of historic architecture. Constructing a new home for the hospital meant talking to community groups in the Lawrenceville neighborhood and considering the needs of residents and local businesses. Children’s respects the community’s long ties to the former St. Francis Medical Center and emphasizes the economic development opportunities presented by the new hospital.

The new Children’s Hospital now stands as a prominent landmark on the Pittsburgh skyline and creates an even larger presence on the landscape of regional, national, and international pediatric health care. Patients travel from every corner of the world for Children’s expertise in specialties like liver transplantation and minimally invasive brain surgery. The hospital’s research program is one of the fastest growing in the nation, drawing some of the world’s highest-profile researchers to work that is defining the future of medicine.

The new Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC is one of the most ambitiously planned and successfully implemented pediatric hospitals in the nation. Even in a region like Pittsburgh blessed with an abundance of world-class medicine and research, the new Children’s will stand out for many years to come.mg

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