Brent Sparks is a principal, office director and director of Health for HKS’ 27-person office in Fort Worth. He is project lead for several of HKS’s projects for Texas Health Resources, including the Jane and John Justin Tower at Texas Health Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital. “We know a facility like the Justin Tower will have a long-term positive impact on the hospital campus, on the community, and on the patients it will serve. We think this building is symbolic, in many ways, of a new chapter for Texas Health Fort Worth.,” says Sparks.
Q: What is the vision for the Justin Tower?
Brent: The new Justin Tower has always been planned as a surgical tower that will launch a new era in the surgical services program at Texas Health Fort Worth. The tower first appeared on a master plan we created for the hospital campus in 2006, so it’s been on the drawing board for 15 years. The tower is also a critical piece of the long-range plan for partial bed reallocation from some of the older patient towers on the hospital campus. We also wanted the design of the tower to represent to the community an advancement in technology and patient care and we wanted it to complement and pay homage to the history represented by the other buildings on the hospital campus. In fact, Acme Brick has a special “Harris Blend” specification that has been used in previous construction and is being used for the Justin Tower.
Q: Because this is a medical facility, what special challenges did you face in designing the Justin Tower?
Brent: Every hospital-based project is complex, especially the in-patient areas. There are lots of state and federal regulations to which we must adhere. Because of our long history of designing healthcare facilities, we brought operational best practices to the table and leveraged those in the design of the tower. A new aspect that we had to consider for this project was the impact of the pandemic.
Q: How did COVID-19 influence the design of the Justin Tower?
Brent: The pandemic forced all of us to hit the pause button on many things in our personal and professional lives but construction for the Justin Tower has never stopped during this time. With that said, both THR and our design team quickly realized that we had an incredible opportunity for the new Justin Tower to offer a “pandemic response” in its final form. We felt strongly that the new tower should incorporate new amenities, technologies, and more robust mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems to better support high acuity clinical operation needed for current and potentially future pandemic events. We compiled a short, but highly impactful, list of design changes, including an entire nursing unit floor with isolation capability. We also incorporated other touchless technology such as wave plates rather than touch plates for opening doors and UV lighting that helps sanitize areas in the new ORs, support services spaces and public elevators. We also reduced the amount of seating in lobbies and waiting areas to enable social distancing. While the Justin Tower is not intended to be a pandemic response building, it does provide the hospital with additional flexibility to care for a greater number of pandemic patients, if the need arises.
Q: As you got feedback from physicians and others, how did the design evolve?
Brent: We strive to include design mock-ups in every healthcare project. The Justin Tower presented a unique opportunity, for the first time in my career, to construct a live mock-up OR and a patient room where surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses were able to care for real patients. Based on their experiences, they provided valuable, real-time feedback to the design team about what was right with the design and what needed to be changed. We also surveyed patients and other staff about their experience and their feedback helped inform our plans to improve the patient and staff experience.
Q: How does the tower’s design enhance the patient and family experience?
Brent: A critical goal of the design was to create a more hospitable environment for the patient and his/her family. We were charged with taking this opportunity to push the boundaries to improve the experience in terms of physical space and technologies being used. The tower will feature a new drive-up valet service in front of the building with easy access from Henderson Street. Patient rooms are larger with an emphasis on freeing up the space on the exterior window wall. Much like a hotel room, the bathroom is positioned on the corridor side of the patient room, leaving more space for the family zone and the patient. We elevated finishes within the patient rooms and throughout the building to have more of a hospitality feel, while taking care to respect the requirements of a clinical setting. We also incorporated bedside technologies that give patients more control over lighting, window shades, and other room amenities that will improve their experience. On each patient floor, an “off stage” staff hallway with minimal doors to the main patient / family circulation corridor was utilized to minimize support service traffic and the associated noise conveying to the patient rooms.
Q: How does the new tower facilitate operational efficiencies?
Brent: The new operating room (OR) arena maximizes efficiency with sterile cores located between the rooms. The patient will be brought through the “front door” of the OR while the physicians and clinical team will enter through the “back door” from the sterile core. We are partially relocating sterile supply to be closer to the ORs in the new tower to reduce the amount of time required to process and restock the rooms. A new area is being constructed over 5th Avenue, between the new ORs in the Justin Tower and the current ORs in the SRP, to accommodate an all-private room, pre-op/post-op recovery area. Patients will be prepared for surgery and recover after surgery in the same space. While complex to design and to construct, this area will improve operational efficiencies and the patient experience. We also kept the current parking garages because they are centrally located on the hospital campus, enabling patients and visitors to get to the new tower or SRP or the other areas of Texas Health Fort Worth, without having to walk extremely long distances.
Optimizing efficiency and providing for long term flexibility were also primary objectives on each patient floor. While initially planned as a medical surgical tower, all patient rooms are designed as “acuity adaptable” with nurse workstation alcoves between every two rooms, enabling the nurse to view the patient in each room without having to enter the room. Patient headwalls are also fully built out to support a higher acuity patient if the need arises. This acuity adaptable approach supports today’s need for the care of lower acuity patients, but also provides the long-term flexibility to convert to higher acuity, ICU level operations if the need arises, with minimum disruption.
Q: What’s the one aspect of the design of which you are most proud?
Brent: For the HKS team, it’s always about helping a client deliver on its vision. For me personally, knowing the tower will have a lasting impact on patient care for generations of Fort Worth residents, serves to reinforce why I got into healthcare architecture in the first place. We are proud to be part of the Harris legacy and Texas Health Fort Worth history and we are honored to help the hospital take a major leap forward to serve the community and to set them up for success for many years to come.