As the largest healthcare hub between Seattle and Minneapolis, Spokane’s new outpatient facility serves the community while targeting health reform. The $32 million state-of-the-art project features an urgent care center, surgical suites as well as offices for primary care doctors. Once completed, the clinic will contain approximately 44 doctors and 12 nurse practitioners or physician assistants, while doctors will also be available for primary care such as cardiology and oncology. The center’s combined urgent care facility, imaging services, laboratory, pharmacy, and cancer center services will be able to treat up to 700 patients a day. The center’s new short-stay observation unit allows patients to recover on-site (and within hours) rather than stay overnight. This unit anticipates a growing amount of outpatient surgeries, while lessening the cost for both provider and patient.
Recognizing that nature can play a role in healing process, the building’s site connects both patients and staff to daylight and the landscape gardens adjacent to the major circulation spaces. The program is distributed into two distinct buildings connected by a ‘hub’ of public spaces. This separation of the more acute services – surgery and urgent care – from the less acute practices – primary and specialty care clinics, result in less congestion at points of entry and an ease of passage for patients. Registration, waiting, café, sacred and conference spaces within the ‘hub’ open to views of the courtyard gardens. Materials have been selected to reinforce connections to the natural environment – stone-like concrete block, zinc panels, glass wood and textured fabrics.