A Medical Journey

Jody Elsom never imagined she’d wind up a patient in a health care center she had designed.

But there she was at the recently opened True Family Women’s Cancer Center on the Swedish Hospital First Hill campus shortly after an unexpected diagnosis for breast cancer.

“It wasn’t what I expected, but it was actually an incredible experience,” recalls Elsom, who is now cancer-free and serves on the board of the American Cancer Society. “We had several patient workshops to gain their insight. But what I discovered is you’re so numb and in this fog that you really don’t know what you’re experiencing. To look back in hindsight and try to provide some insight for future patients would be helpful, but you’re not in the right mindset to absorb it enough to be able to explain it.”

Elsom founded Project Planning Partners 19 years ago after working as a senior project manager at Trammell Crow Co. The five-person, Seattle-based company specializes in project management and strategic planning in health care facilities. The company is now working on the Stuart and Molly Sloan Precision Oncology Institute for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

Elsom is also the founder of Seattle’s Elsom Cellars winery. The Project Planning Partners team normally meets at client offices, but the company’s official headquarters is, in fact, in the winery.

“I never expected to start a winery,” she says. “I just had an interest in learning more about wine, so I went to school and one thing led to another, and here I am. The winery is my passion project.”

Most of my work with Project Planning Partners is referral based, and word of mouth. I haven’t really done much marketing.

We’re trying to figure out how you design spaces for the future when you don’t know how things are going to evolve.

A health care setting definitely differentiates substantially from a traditional office space because you have a lot more critical spaces, and a lot more technical. It’s a much higher level of detail and coordination infrastructure. There’s just so many more pieces for you to consider.

The level of equipment and complexity that comes with a health care environment is so much more significant. If you make a mistake, and things don’t function right, you don’t have the right air changes, you don’t have clean environments, then the downside effect is horrible for patients.

Caregivers need a space to break down. We had a lot of little private coves, and furniture configurations, and the common areas that could allow for that privacy and intimacy.

My involvement with patients is sitting on a lot of these patient advisory groups and patient focus groups. And, at the end of the project, we always tour them through and tell them how they helped.

When we did the project for Swedish, we had a patient advisory committee that came in, prior patients, who helped identify pinch points in their experience and what could have been done better. And similarly, with (a recent Fred Hutch project), we had a patient advisory board that was pretty integral to the process. We spent months in a warehouse in Des Moines, and mocked up the entire patient flow through the building in cardboard, and walked through that with patients so that we had the provider workflow, we had the patient workflow.

The biggest difference is that patient-centric approach, and figuring out how to bring services to the patient. When I first started, it was more focused on how we make it more efficient for staff.

We opened up the women’s cancer center in Swedish, and then I became a patient there going through those processes that we had outlined and really experiencing it firsthand and saying, OK well, this was a great idea, but maybe we should have had more patient influence in those workshops.

The biggest difference (in health care design over the years) is that patient-centric approach, and really figuring out how to bring services to the patient. I think when I first started, it was more focused on how we make it more efficient for the staff versus recognizing the importance of patient-centered care.

A lot of the times with the new processes, they’re trying to bring those things to the patient. So, you’re sitting in this exam room, and what can we actually bring to the patient, so the patient doesn’t have to travel three floors up or way over to this other building?

I think one of the biggest issues that cancer patients have is that they need to have their blood taken prior to being able to have chemotherapy. Where do they go that’s close to home, or how do they make sure that’s streamlined?

Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of friends who have gone through (illness) and are going through the process, but they really feel cared for at Swedish.

One of the projects I’m really excited about has nothing to do necessarily with health care, but with people care. We’re midway funded to build a new shelter for Mary’s Place. There are clinics that are going to be involved in the shelter to help take care of people. So, it’s a small component to it.

I love making wine, and now I don’t have time. I’ve got someone else doing it. It’s like that baby you have to let go of and really entrust other people to do the work.

A lot of weekends you’ll find me at the winery, and some evenings as well. I’m on Zoom and my meetings are from the winery, so I can just monitor as things are chaotic. It’s not a bad office.

My kids are 19 and 17. My fiancé has three kids. Oh my God.

I’m trying to stick to a very good meditation and yoga practice. I have not been good at it.