Health Hub of the Future

Hospitals aren’t always the most inviting places. Never-ending corridors, sterile fluorescent lights, and a labyrinthine maze of rooms often create an environment that make patients and health care providers feel uneasy.

It doesn’t have to be that way. And Swedish Health Services’ ambitious First Hill expansion project aims to prove it.

After 10 years of planning, construction is finally underway on the first leg of Swedish Health Services’ $1.3 billion acute care facility. The 12-story North Tower is slated to open in fall 2027, and features advanced operating and emergency rooms, intensive care units, and imaging facilities. Construction on nearby Block 95 Tower, a facility housing outpatient care and medical offices, will follow.

It is perhaps the most ambitious project in Swedish’s 114-year-old history, and one hospital officials say will ensure that the health system remains viable for the next century. The entire expansion will more than double the size of the Providence Swedish campus from approximately 1.5 million to 3.15 million square feet.

“We have to. Our facilities are aging quickly and need to be replaced,” says Dr. Elizabeth Wako, president and CEO of Swedish Health Services, who notes that the project is among the largest health care investments in the United States. “We need to invest in modern facilities. This project is not just about bricks and mortar. It’s a reimagination.”

The North Tower facility will replace aging infrastructure with state-of-the-art rooms and technology, including 24 advanced operating suites, a new 31-room emergency department, 72 acuity-adaptable intensive care unit beds, and new imaging facilities. Construction will expand beyond both the North Tower and Block 95 to source non-fossil fuel steam and reclaim waste heat. The goal is to make the entire Swedish system carbon negative by 2030.

“There are some significant things that need to be modernized and improved,” says Brad Hinthorne, managing principal of the Seattle studio of architecture firm Perkins&Will. “There’s a lot of efficiency to be gained that ultimately will help not only the patients, but the institution.”

Perkins&Will was first awarded the project in 2014. The design pivoted multiple times during that period as the priorities of Providence Health & Services — of which Swedish is affiliated — changed over time.

“I think it’s a challenge to design these facilities for very long-term flexibility for what is an unknown future of technology with a constrained budget, as those things are sometimes in conflict,” says Marie Henson, national health care lead for Perkins&Will, whose headquarters are in Chicago.

With flexibility as a core focus, the North Tower’s several adaptable floors make the project unique. Three floors of the tower are planned to be shell spaces, Henson adds, allowing them to house either procedural space or ICU beds depending on patient and provider needs at any given point.

The firm has also been strategic with the location and planning of “soft space” in the tower. “For instance, in the (operating room) suites,” Henson says, “if there’s a technology that we’re not aware of now that ends up requiring additional square footage, there are spaces adjacent that would not disrupt patient care.”

Efficiency was also a key focus. New spaces in health care architecture have traditionally simply been expanded onto older ones, something Henson calls “lump-and-bump” architecture. The result is a “giant superblock” with complex wayfinding that adds unnecessary stress to high-pressure situations. The North Tower is designed for “intuitive wayfinding” that aims to ease that anxiety.

The North Tower will also include new retail areas and green spaces to offer both health care providers and patients a place of respite. Hinthorne noted that developers have paid attention to the impact on the First Hill community, adding things like a walking trail loop and public art to “soften” the area, aiming to create a space that’s “more like a campus and less like a hardcore hospital.”

The patient- and community-centric project directs the same intensity toward providers, a particularly important consideration given the long and grueling shifts health care providers often face, adds Carl Hampson, a health care architecture expert who serves as principal and regional design director at HKS Architects in Seattle.

The pandemic ravaged the U.S. health care system, creating an exodus of workers in its wake. Around 145,000 health care providers left their jobs between 2021 and 2022, according to Definitive Healthcare, a company that provides analytics and provider data to health systems across the country.

Those who did stay often experience difficult mental health impacts: Of more than 43,000 providers surveyed by the American Medical Association, 50% reported experiencing burnout. Offering comfortable spaces for providers to rest and recharge could help stymie those impacts, Hampson says.

“The most important thing which often gets overlooked is the staff itself,” he notes, “because they’re under extremely stressful working conditions.”

The project also emphasizes the importance of daylight. Studies show that daylight and a connection to the outdoors in health care settings bring significant health and well-being to both patients and providers. Daylight can cut down the length of hospital stays, reduce perceived stress, and improve depression and seasonal affective disorder.

The new North Tower will bring daylight into the main lobby in a way that didn’t exist before, and will create idyllic views to ease tension and promote healing.

Hinthorne notes that the project also represents a significant investment in the First Hill community, and “we want to make sure that we do it right and check all those boxes.”