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New Home for Neuroscience

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4 minute read March 21, 2019

Going beyond just patient-centered, the new UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute building is sensitive to the needs of those who need it the most

 

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ransformative, comforting and patient-sensitive. When it opens in April, the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute will serve as a much-needed central hub of neurological care, expertise and research for the region, and all under the same roof.

 

But it’s bigger than that.

It’s more personal than that. For Dr. Joseph Broderick, a new home for neuroscience at UC Health represents hope. Hope for patients to come and a commitment to people neurological diseases have claimed. A year ago, Broderick, director of the institute, signed the final steel beam of the building. Before it was raised into place, he wrote, “For Phyllis,” his mother-in-law, who died of Alzheimer’s.

When the doors open, patients will find that the $68 million facility — a 114,000 square foot addition at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Eden Avenue — is one that’s been designed and customized specifically with them in mind.

Before a single shovel of dirt was turned, planners turned to patients and others to ask hard questions: What type of facility will best serve people who are recovering from a stroke, a traumatic brain injury or fighting a brain tumor? How can design meet the needs of those managing life with Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease or other neurological diseases? 

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From the small touches to the big ones, their answers were incorporated into the facility in the form of glass, concrete and steel. To truly build a home for all of neurological outpatient care, Broderick and others wanted to ensure it was a place of belonging, of comfort for patients and their caregivers. “We’ve relied heavily on our patients to assist in the design of this building,” says Broderick. “It is for them and truly is created by them.”

UC Health hired global architecture and design firm Perkins+Will to oversee the planning and design of the facility. They sought input from doctors, staff and students, and worked with an advisory committee made up of current patients and caregivers, to address every step in the patient’s journey — from the parking garage to the exam room.

“The patient advisory group was really informative for us,” says Clark Miller, managing principal of Perkins+Will. “For instance, we heard them describe the challenges of navigating sloped, tight parking garages, so we designed a flat-leveled garage with entrances and exits from the elevators right to the patient floors, and adjusted the distance between parking spaces to accommodate wheelchairs, as well as stretchers.”

Throughout the two-year design/build process, plywood models were built, mock patient rooms were staged, textiles samples and finishes passed around, all based on feedback from the patient advisory group, and reviewed by clinicians and staff

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