Beatrice Community Hospital

Altus was selected from a very distinguished group of healthcare design firms to work with Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center to develop a much-needed replacement facility on a Greenfield site. The existing hospital, like many other rural facilities, was in a building that was costly to maintain and didn’t fit the needs of the community they served. The hospital’s overall look and feel was also lacking with deficiencies in patient bathrooms, public and private space, storage, area work-flows, wayfinding, and overall location. This resulted in a deteriorating hospital brand and presented challenges in keeping physicians.

The 143,000-square-foot plan also takes into account future growth and expansion. The new full-service hospital contains a 25,000-square-foot “B” occupancy medical office building which was fully leased before the building began. The hospital’s newly-created operational plan allowed the facility to market and recruit a full-time local obstetrician, multiple hospitalists and an orthopedic physicians to the area.

The design vision for the hospital was to integrate the healing properties of nature into the every patient’s experience. This dictated that the building be set in a garden instead of a parking lot with plantings spread across the entire medical campus. Lush outdoor gardens surround the in-patient care rooms providing a visual connection to the beauty and restorative powers of nature for patients in each room. A paved walkway meanders through the green space, with several seating areas for patients, family members and hospital staff.

The planning of the women’s services department takes into consideration the need for flexibility within a critical access hospital while maintaining privacy for the patients and their families. This department includes a nursery, two LDRP rooms, and three post-partum rooms. Today, the Beatrice Hospital continues to see a rise in births, outpatient procedures and diagnostic testing and the performance is exceeding the expectations of everyone involved in the project.

IIDA Great Plains Chapter Silver Award