Hospital Operators Spurn Luxurious 'Ritz-Carlton Features,' Push For Greater Utility

Healthcare in the U.S. is notoriously expensive, and in recent decades, many newly constructed hospitals were designed with hospitality-inspired features to match.

But some hospital executives regret making hospital lobbies look like high-end hotels, they said during Bisnow’s Philadelphia Healthcare Real Estate Conference last week. 

“We have leaned toward providing Ritz-Carlton features when you walk in, and they are ungodly inefficient to operate,” Main Line Health CEO Ed Jimenez said at the event, held at the Wanamaker Building.

“They are a tremendous waste of valuable real estate, and it’s debatable if they’ve actually changed the patient experience.”

Jimenez said the trend impacting the design of lobby and patient floors, which he traced back to the 2000s, has made it harder for nurses to navigate these facilities. And he said they have created extra costs that make it harder to pay hospital staff.

“So there's the expense over here, and then I walk into these ungodly inefficient-looking buildings that don't allow us the flexibility to create the services that people need. So now we need to go build something, buy something, put something somewhere else,” he said.

“I’m not here to criticize, because I built these silly things too,” the CEO added.

Sixty-two percent of patients find the U.S. healthcare system confusing, General Catalyst Executive in Residence Stephen Klasko said at the event. Jefferson Health Vice President of Real Estate Dallas Pulliam referenced this stat when discussing how patients perceive the physical design of hospitals.

“We need to make sure when they get in the building, it’s an easier process,” Pulliam said.

At the Jefferson Honickman Center in Center City, that effort is carried out through a different kind of hospitality-style approach.

“We've got a large check-in area where it's kind of a concierge,” Pulliam said. “So if someone walks in and it looks like they might be having a problem, one of our staff will actually come up to them and walk them through the process.”

While Jimenez said blunders were made in the 2000s, other panelists weren’t nostalgic for the highly specialized designs pumped out by hospital systems in the 20th century.

Ideas that seemed innovative at the time are causing headaches decades later, Array Advisors President Jonathan Bykowski said.

“As a card-carrying healthcare architect, I really am opposed to creativity in hospital design,” he said.

“All hospitals should be rectangles, because whatever you think that hospital is today is not what that hospital will be doing in 25 years. And I guarantee you that that octagon from the 1970s, which was a really whiz-bang idea, does not translate super well into other functions.”

The architect said he hopes the designers behind a new wave of outpatient buildings have learned that lesson.

Many healthcare providers are looking for flexibility as they expand their outpatient portfolios, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Assistant Vice President of Real Estate David Kontra said.

“I use two words: flexibility and optionality,” he said.

“Buildings that you can use for a variety of things, they become the most attractive to us. Obviously, you just can't take every office building and convert it to an apartment, and you can't take every single office building or other random building and make it an [ambulatory surgery center].”