Ambulatory Care Centre

The centre by TILT is an innovative centre for emergency care designed around the patients’ needs, staff requirements and smooth departmental flow.

Design and architecture practice Studio TILT used their people-centred approach to explore and test what was really required for the space, by involving patients and staff in the design process.

At the heart of the new centre’s effectiveness, was a series of design objectives to create a
functional, yet ground breaking department including an enhanced patient experience, intuitive and clinically directed layout, clear signage and branding with increased health promotion and improved staff experience.

In order to fully understand the patient experience, how the centre needed to operate and the staff requirements for these objectives, Studio TILT ran workshops with more than 70 people across the Trust. These included managers, clinicians, administrators, infection prevention and control staff and patients. This gave everyone using the space a voice in the design process.

From the codesign workshop results and creation of full-scale mock-ups, the space was developed for elements such as the treatment rooms, sluices, scanners, ultrasound and phlebotomy alongside support and outreach resources for teleconferencing, seminars and integrated community services spaces. A communal area was formed from the central space, ensuring seamless movement between treatments, helping to reduce waiting times while creating a tranquil setting.

Challenging the traditional healthcare environment, the new design improves the patient experience in many ways including direct access to natural light and natural ventilation within as many areas as possible. A simple switch of corridor and treatment rooms, for example, means that it is the rooms that receive the natural light and ventilation rather than the corridor. These factors improve both the staff experience and productivity, but more importantly the wellbeing of patients.

The dynamic space had to allow for a huge range of different departments with a wide spectrum of treatments for children and adults. Key to the design was the idea that this should be a new kind of space; a chance to create a world-class unit that didn’t feel like a hospital.

Based on original ideas to have calming, large scale graphics, Levitt Bernstein commissioned London illustrator Alex Green to produce a series of murals which both transformed and enhanced clinical areas, creating a more social, café style environment and incorporating clear, colour coded way-finding systems. This represented a radical departure from conventional hospital waiting and treatment areas.