Rush University Medical Center - Rush Transformation

Rush Transformation

Today, Rush is a thriving center for basic and clinical research, with physicians and scientists involved in hundreds of research projects developing and testing the effectiveness and safety of new therapies and medical devices. Some of the most exciting projects at Rush are under way in the Robert H. Cohn and Terri Cohn Research Building, a state-of-the-art facility where investigators are conducting research to identify the causes of a wide range of diseases. Rush is investing over a billion dollars in the Rush Transformation, a comprehensive construction and renovation program that includes a 14-story inpatient care facility and advanced emergency response center (opened in 2012), a five-story ambulatory orthopedic building that opened in 2009, a seven-story parking garage, a central energy plant, an underground loading dock, and renovations to existing buildings.

The new 806,000-square-foot (74,900 m2) East Tower hospital building would provide Rush with its first major new hospital facility in more than 25 years. The 14-level patient care tower houses acute and critical care patients, as well as surgical, diagnostic and therapeutic services utilizing the most advanced technology available. The new hospital would include expanded emergency services facilities including the Center for Advanced Emergency Response, a unique facility that would bring an unprecedented level of preparedness to Chicago and the region in the event of immediate and widespread emergencies such as pandemics or bioterrorism. The center is designed to have 40 exam rooms with “surge” capacity to treat additional patients in times of disaster. It is located on the ground floor of the new tower.

The new facility incorporates a concept called "interventional platform," a design model developed in recent years for centers like Rush that increasingly involve multiple medical specialists to treat patients with highly complex illnesses using the most advanced technologies available. Two other academic medical centers constructing new inpatient facilities, UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles) and Johns Hopkins Hospital Center (Baltimore), have or are incorporating the interventional platform concept into their new hospital buildings. The interventional platforms at Rush cover three floors devoting to surgery, imaging and specialty procedures. This includes new, larger operating rooms that can accommodate more specialized equipment and technology, including imaging equipment and robotics. Nearby, the facilities for interventional radiology, cardiology and neurosurgery, fostering more extensive collaboration between various medical disciplines. Locating these key services close to one another minimizes the need for patients and their families to travel to multiple locations in the medical center.

The top five floors of the east tower houses Rush’s acute and critical patients, with each floor divided in half with two equal sections – or units – on either side. The 10th and 11th floors houses the hospital’s adult critical care units, each floor having two 28-bed units. The remaining three floors are dedicated to acute care medical/surgical patients with two 32-bed areas on each level.

The design of the acute and critical care tower was created by doctors and nurses whose ideas about universal room design, standardization, efficiency and safety influenced the layout. They considered sight lines to rooms from the nursing station and the number of steps required to reach each room. Nursing stations are at the central core, allowing hospital staff to see into all the wings from one location. All patient rooms are standardized as either a medical surgical room or a critical care room, so that when caregivers enter any room in the new tower, they can able to quickly access supplies and equipment.

All patient rooms are private and offer family accommodations, such as daybeds for visitors. There are 376 beds in the new facility, and Rush will have a total of 720 beds in operation at the completion of the Transformation project.

Rush seeks Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality.