Clark Patterson Lee’s work at Rochester General Hospital is an example of the firm’s commitment to examining a facility’s processes before developing a plan.

Premier Business Partners:

LeCesse Construction Clark Patterson

Clark Patterson Lee provides architectural, engineering and design services to a broad selection of clients throughout the eastern United States, finding success by rejecting a “one-size-fits-all” philosophy in favor of a client-centered approach to its work. President Todd Liebert says that in the healthcare sector, as with all the market segments it operates in, each project stands on its own.   

“We treat every project in its own unique way, guiding our clients through the design and construction process,” Liebert says. “We don’t have a set design approach that we take on every project.”    

This means that no matter what the project, Clark Patterson Lee works closely with the client to develop a program that is the client’s own preferences come to life. The experience and knowledge of its senior staff are also at a client’s disposal, according to Liebert.    

“Our principals are all involved in the projects from beginning to end,” he says.    

Liebert says the firm doesn’t want to force a plan on a client just because it’s easier, trendier or flashier.    

In working with many community-based hospitals throughout the last 15 years, Clark Patterson Lee has found that the firm’s client-centered approach is a perfect fit due to the varying needs of each facility. “Certain clients want that high-end, world-class feel and others don’t, so I think it works well because we fit our approach to the client,” Liebert says. “High end or humble, good design is good design.”   

Clark Patterson Lee has 12 offices serving New York, Georgia and the Carolinas. It specializes in architectural services for the healthcare and education markets as well as engineering work for municipal and state governments. The firm began serving the healthcare sector in the early 1990s, but has been in operation for nearly 40 years. Liebert says that in working with Clark Patterson Lee, “the client can be confident knowing that they will be working with experienced professionals.”   

The healthcare market is changing almost daily, as new technologies and new philosophies affect the way healthcare providers treat patients. Liebert says Clark Patterson Lee is working hard to create healthcare environments for its clients that provide flexibility to accommodate not only new methods and equipment today, but will continue to allow for their implementation in the future.   

In particular, a pair of recent projects – Our Lady Lourdes Memorial Hospital (Ascension Health) in Binghamton, N.Y., and Rochester General Hospital in Rochester, N.Y. – bear out the firm’s ability to create modern healthcare spaces that please both healthcare providers and patients.

Lourdes Hospital
Lourdes Hospital is undergoing a $70 million expansion designed by Clark Patterson Lee. Liebert says the hospital was operating in an outdated facility with strong strategic ambulatory focus. The expansion adds new capacity for future volumes with the appropriate zones for ambulatory and inpatient care (the scope includes a parking deck, and additions and renovations to its radiology, operating rooms and emergency departments.    

One of the biggest changes the firm made to the hospital was in its emergency department. Liebert says the hospital’s emergency department operated based on some outdated processes, and it was not very efficient.       

“The hospital experienced difficulties resulting from the use of a single entrance for ambulances and walk-in patients,” he says. Creating separate entrances for both types of traffic caused the hospital to rethink how it processed patients and changed its entire perspective on patient throughput.   

“We challenged their processes, as we worked to solve a pressing need,” Liebert says.    

Clark Patterson Lee’s new design for Lourdes Hospital also included a clinical decision unit in the emergency department, which is something the hospital had never had before.   

Here, patients are held for observation for 23 hours to give doctors a chance to determine whether or not the patient should be kept at the hospital.    

Another challenge was to develop a design strategy to zone the inpatients and the outpatients.    

With the emerging ambulatory strategy, inpatients needed to be separated, to the extent possible, from outpatients to improve patient flow without losing staffing efficiencies in a smaller community hospital. Liebert says all of these operational factors had a greater impact on the design solution than anything else.   

“We look at the operation first before we look at the architecture,” he says. “If you take a dysfunctional family and move them into a new house, you still have the same dysfunctional family.”

Flood Challenges
One significant challenge Clark Patterson Lee encountered on the Lourdes Hospital project was the threat posed by its location on a 100-year flood plain. In fact, the Susquehanna River flooded shortly after Clark Patterson Lee came onto the project, Liebert explains.    

The flood closed the hospital for 10 days while Clark Patterson Lee engineers and architects collaborated with all relevant parties – owner, city, state and contractor – to get the hospital operating again.    

“It caused us both to revisit project assumptions when we were six months into an eight-month planning process,” Liebert says. In the end, he says, the plans were revised to provide for access to the hospital from three different grades, as well as containing flood water on the site in accordance with FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers directives.

Rochester General Hospital
With the Emergency Department currently under construction, Clark Patterson Lee’s work at Rochester General Hospital is another example of the firm’s commitment to examining a facility’s processes before developing a plan. Like Lourdes Memorial Hospital, Rochester General Hospital is an older facility, and as such, additions and renovations were made over the years that resulted in a less than optimal hospital layout.    

For example, patient access throughout the building was too conspicuous and tended to overlap with public access, Liebert says. Additionally, ambulatory services were buried deep inside the hospital and admissions were spread across three different locations. Liebert says hospitals built in the 1950s with additions made in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s typically have that type of layout, which is not in step with modern healthcare processes and philosophies of care.    

The master plan developed by Clark Patterson Lee in 2003 brought more services to the forefront of the hospital and improved inpatient traffic flow to reduce contact with outpatients. The building’s new emergency department is comprised of seven modules that can be shut down individually for cleaning and prep work during off peak hours. This was a request from the hospital’s new chief of emergency services, Liebert says, who tested a similar system two years earlier. Liebert says the new facility represents a “complete change of operation” for Rochester General Hospital.

Urban Renewal
Working in the Northeast means that Clark Patterson Lee works primarily with existing hospitals, and usually relatively old facilities.  In many cases, the firm is working on facilities that were built more than 50 years ago.   

“Particularly in New York, very few hospitals are being replaced,” Liebert says. “It doesn’t mean the beds aren’t being replaced, but we’re working with a lot of aged facilities.”   

In the meantime, medical science continues to change the face of healthcare, and providers constantly change the prevailing philosophies and processes to accommodate the new ways of caring for patients. The clash between modern processes and facilities from previous eras can make it difficult for some hospitals to integrate new technology or streamline their operations.   

Clark Patterson Lee is helping many clients to see the value of modular grid systems for designing spaces that allow for multiple acuities of care and office space inside the same building that can easily be updated. Such grid systems make it easier for certain elements to be rearranged.   

“A lot of our clients are looking for that [flexibility],” Liebert says.    

For new construction, he adds, a universal grid system is making it easier for new facilities to be flexible as well, and are finally within the reach of many hospitals. It has only been in recent years that structural grids of more than 30 feet by 30 feet have been financially viable options in institutional buildings.   

In the future, Liebert says, Clark Patterson Lee sees great potential for growth in healthcare in the Southeast and in higher education in the Northeast. He says that growing the firm in these areas while maintaining its strength in municipal services will bring balance between its specialties and geographic markets.