The Path to Kindness
Dignity Health’s path to kindness began in 2014. A confluence of necessary built-environment improvements, meetings with patients about their experiences and the Hello Humankindness concept propelled changes to the health-care system. “We had teams go through all our hospitals and take 25,000 pictures and record 120,000 pieces of distinct data,” Land recalls. “Then we put them into a database and began to sort that data by asking how we best represent ourselves. We came up with 16 touchpoints, places we had to bring to a humankindness level. Then you layer on the patient experiences, staff and health-care professionals’ feedback, what evidence-based design says and how to convey Hello Humankindness differently.”
Dignity Health began renovations at different campuses during fall 2015. “The idea was to break this into work streams,” Land explains. “I’ve never done anything this broad or this invasive all at once. These are 39 highly technical, really critical, fully functioning hospitals in operation. We are going to go into 16 different areas of every, single one of those hospitals to perform multiple work streams in everything from their elevators to their patient rooms to their technology to all of the surfaces—paint, flooring and branding through-out—then, by necessity, we are going to have an enormously complicated phasing and scheduling and disruption plan.”
Land has developed partnerships with teams at every hospital. Teams are diverse and include nursing, security, administration, facilities and infection control. The teams meet and discuss—and sometimes debate—about how to phase construction. “The nurses may tell me, ‘Come back in two months’, so we have to change the order of installation,” Land notes. “The last thing we want to do is to try to improve patient care by disrupting it.”
The Result of Humankindness
As the Hello Humankindness renovations come to fruition, Land has been receiving positive feedback from health-care staff and on social media. In fact, a recent story assures him facility changes truly are making a difference in patient care. “Nine lobbies now contain a baby grand player piano that fills the space and hallways with elegant music,” he says. “One of our mission services professionals at a hospital in Nevada shared that she saw a doctor sitting with a patient, listening to music and talking in the lobby. This is a nice way to create a connection between doctor and patient, which is difficult in the health-care environment, where there’s not a lot of time for everything.”
Land can’t imagine a higher calling or a more rewarding experience than to reinvent patient care. “I’ve done an awful lot of construction projects in my career, but I would call this a capstone,” he says. “If at the end of the day we have changed the experience for someone at their most vulnerable point, I can’t imagine anything better.”
A Dose of Kindness
If you need a dose of kindness, visit the Hello Humankindness website. The site shares stories of kindness from around the world.
Retrofit Team
Architect: Devenney Group, Phoenix
General Contractors: Skanska, Phoenix; Swinerton Builders, Sacramento, Calif.; ETC Building & Design, Pasadena, Calif.; and Alan Roinestad Construction & Management Inc., Santa Maria, Calif.
Construction Management: Vanir Construction Management Inc., Sacramento
Materials
Flooring: Armstrong Flooring, Shaw Contract Group,
and Johnsonite
Surface Material: Formica, Wilsonart, and Samsung Staron
Interior Paint: Dunn Edwards
Ceilings: Armstrong Ceilings
Wall Panels: Armstrong Ceiling Solutions and C/S Group
Wall Protection: Johnsonite and C/S Group
LEDs: Acuity Brands
Plumbing: American Standard, Sloan and Bobrick
Window Treatments: MechoSystems
Doors: ASSA ABLOY
Overnight Sleeper Chair: La-Z-Boy Contract Furniture
PHOTOS: Dignity Health