The Philadelphia VA Medical Center provides health care to Veterans living in America’s fifth-largest metropolitan area, including the city of Philadelphia and six surrounding counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey.

Affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and numerous other allied health schools and colleges, the Philadelphia VA Medical Center offers comprehensive surgical, medical and psychiatric care to include special emphasis programs, alcohol and drug dependence treatment, and rehabilitative care.

Project Scope General Description
Located on the Fifth Floor of the medical center, the design reconfigured the existing 25,000 square foot area and created a new OR suite achieving the medical center’s objective for a state-of-the-art unit. The design exceeded all VA Medical Center National Standards while achieving optimal patient, physician and staff travel efficiencies for optimal patient care. Our design also met the operational requirements of maintaining occupancy on this, and adjacent floors by developing a Multi-Phase construction process.  “Best Practices” design principles and IRCA Patient Care strategies were designed and approved allowing the construction process to move forward.

The new surgical suite provides six new operating rooms, the renovation of two existing OR’s and a new Hybrid OR to support robotic surgeries. The unit is organized around a central Sterile Core / Medications / Anesthesia configuration from which all operating rooms have direct access. One of the six OR’s is designated as a Special Purpose OR with a blood gas analysis/equipment suite supporting eye surgeries.

Additional support spaces include women and men staff locker rooms, physicians’ locker rooms, administrative work center, and staff lounges, Pathology, CRNA, Scrub/PPE offices and a Patient Hold / Scheduling / OR Unit Control Center. The overall design combined both the “On Stage / Off Stage” Surgery Suite Space organization approach with all VA Medical Center Design standards. The project is currently under construction is the projected completion date is June 2020.

In addition to the new OR unit, our firm also provided design and construction services for a new CT Radiology Suite and the upgrade to the entire hospital’s Medical Gas Tank Storage Facility and Interior Building Routing Assemblies.  At the request of the medical center, we also delivered the programming and design for their post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) which is adjacent to the new OR Unit.