Patient-Centered Care at the Forefront of Novant Health Ballantyne

The new Novant Health Ballantyne Medical Center is located around two critical aspects: care and comfort. With 40 inpatient rooms, women’s care, surgery, heart-vascular imaging and 15 emergency room stations situated on 38 acres of land featuring walking trails, greenery, and a pond, the medical center is dedicated to providing patients with the optimal treatment experience.

Fostering a Calm Environment

To establish an efficient yet calming environment that would curb anxiety for both patients and visitors, every carefully considered design decision focused on patient-centered care throughout the expansive low-rise facility. This vision can be seen in a handful of design aspects, from room arrangement to equipment placement, as well as the focus on natural light.

A lantern of light placed between the hospital and the medical office building not only identifies the entrance to the hospital, but also serves as a wayfinding entity for visitors.

Situated at the southern reach of the Charlotte suburbs, Novant Health aims to maintain a calm environment through an open and flowing interior and surrounding views of the campus that contribute to individual health and well-being.  Walls of windows in the waiting areas allow light to spill into the facility and offer views of the tree-lined community greenspace and pond on the campus.

A Collaborative Design Process

Early in design development, the project team chose to incorporate a design practice deemed imperative to developing a successful project: guided user collaboration. To ensure that everyone’s voice was heard in conceptualization, we invited Novant’s clinicians, providers, administrators, and ancillary staff to participate in our Immersive Design Event.

Grouped into their respective multidisciplinary teams with our healthcare planners to lead, Novant users arranged puzzle pieces to create their ideal layout for each floor that embodied efficiency and patient comfort, and overall met optimal care goals. Details such as shortened travel distances, improved patient visualization, and department arrangement were considered during these sessions. After constructing several different schemes, the teams voted on the best option and presented it to their peers to establish consensus and a collaborative foundation that would span the duration of the project.

Although this facility is already a stunning addition to Novant Health’s medical sphere, there is much more in store for Novant Health. The specific design of the building and site was intended for future growth and structural innovation, which will eventually allow for an expansion to the emergency and surgery departments, a simple conversion of intermediate care rooms into a fully established intensive care unit suite, and added space for inpatient beds and women’s services through a vertical expansion of the adjacent medical office Building that is designed for hospital use.