URMC Employee Health Facility

The URMC Employee Health facility had outgrown its existing space on AC3. The clinical suite was operating well over capacity, with many rooms serving triple duty for patient care, storage, and office space. This created inefficiencies in patient visits due to multi-use rooms and marginal accessibility to equipment in these rooms. They also had decentralized work areas spread out over several hospital floors for non-clinical functions, which made for a very inefficient workflow for the administrative staff. The department had also made adjustments on the fly to deal with COVID-19 screening of URMC staff but needed better facilities designed to maintain patient privacy and protect the department staff’s health.

URMC wanted to increase the number of exam rooms from two to three; decompress testing rooms like vision, respirator, and phlebotomy; provide two dry toilet rooms and two hydration stations; provide a dedicated Covid testing room and call center; and increase support space efficiencies by consolidating the team to one location. These changes increased the department’s capacity, improved patient privacy, streamlined workflows, increased staff safety, and ultimately provided a patient care experience that aligns better with the URMC brand.

During the early stages of construction, the Employee Health Department merged with another clinical group and needed to make provisions for additional staff within the suite. We worked with the users to identify the necessary changes to the space program. We optimized the design adjustments to make the necessary changes while minimizing the project schedule and budget impact.

Long lead times due to post-Covid manufacturing delays made maintaining the construction schedule difficult. Standard items like doors and HVAC equipment had substantial delays, which impacted the delivery of the project. In some cases, temporary solutions were implemented to keep the project moving forward.

Big Idea

Relocate the Employee Heath suite to increase the department’s capacity, improve patient privacy, streamline workflows, increase staff safety, and ultimately provide a patient care experience that aligns better with the URMC brand.