1. Identify the many variables that a hospital needs to consider in layout design. When Orlando’s Arnold Palmer Hospital began plans to create a new 273-bed, 11-story hospital across the street from its existing facility, which was bursting at the seams in terms of capacity, a massive planning process began. The $100 million building, opened in 2006, was long overdue, according to Executive Director Kathy Swanson: “We started Arnold Palmer Hospital in 1989, with a mission to provide quality services for children and women in a comforting, family-friendly environment. Since then we have served well over 1.5 million women and children and now deliver more than 12,000 babies a year. By 2001, we simply ran out of room, and it was time for us to grow.”

The new hospital’s unique, circular pod design provides a maximally efficient layout in all areas of the hospital, creating a patient-centered environment. Servicescape design features include a serene environment created through the use of warm colors, private rooms with pull-down Murphy beds for family members, 14-foot ceilings, and natural lighting with oversized windows in patient rooms. But these radical new features did not come easily. “This pod concept with a central nursing area and pie-shaped rooms resulted from over 1,000 planning meetings of 35 user groups, extensive motion and time studies, and computer simulations of the daily movements of nurses,” says Swanson

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Room Room Room Room Room Room 501 502 503 504 505 506 20 30 40' 50' 60' 70' Distance -Hallway- from 30' 40' 50' Nurses' station Linens Break Medical room Figure 9.21 Traditional Hospital Layout Patient rooms are on two linear Electrical/ mechanical supply room nurses' station (feet) -Hallway- 20' 30' 40' 50' 60' 70' hallways with exterior windows. Supply rooms are on interior corridors. This layout is called a Room 507 Room Room Room 508 509 510 Room Room 511 512 "racetrack" design.