Innovating Healthcare Delivery Models: How UCI is Building the Smart Hospital of the Future

Bill: Thank you so much for joining us at the AI healthcare forum on September 22nd. We wanted to take this opportunity via the podcast to have you tell us a little bit more, do a little bit of a deep dive in terms of what’s happening at UC Irvine. There seems to be a number of projects that are going on here. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Brian: Sure. Yeah. Thanks. It’s a busy time here at UCI, along with the north campus healthcare projects. We’re under construction on a 2000. Space parking structure. We’re just turning over the Susan and Henry Samueli, college of health sciences, and nursing building.

Brian: That includes the Susan Samueli integrative health Institute. And we’ve just turned over our Verona eight graduate and family student housing project which is 1,055 beds over in our housing residential area. So it’s a busy time we’re in programming on several other projects, including our jack and SNAs Langston Institute and museum of California art the Edelman physics quantum physics building, and a we are bidding on the falling leaves, foundation, medical innovation building, which is a over 200,000 square foot wet lab research building.

Bill: Wow. That is a lot going on. Some innovations in terms of delivery of care at the campus.

Bill: Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Brian: Sure. I’ll start with the Susan Samuel Willy integrative health Institute. That’s a clinic that provides broad services for overall wellness treats, the whole person. Really a different delivery model based on evidence based treatments.

Brian: But on our north campus where we’re building our hospital and chow family cancer center and ambulatory care center that focuses on several specialties specifically. It focuses on orthopedics cancer, neurosciences and digestive health. And we’re building them as universal beds in the 144 bed tower.

Brian: Really a different approach at this point.

Bill: fantastic. Thanks so much. And a lot of changes that have happened in healthcare over the last couple of years with the pandemic. What what have you how’s your process or designed changed as a result of that?

Brian: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

Bill: I think you mentioned in the healthcare forum panel that you’ve gone to a universal room within the hospital, is that correct?

Brian: That’s right. So the universal bed universal room idea is that all the beds, all the room are designed for ICU. And permitted for ICU use. Now, they likely won’t all be licensed that way. But we do have that flexibility and flexibility is really the focus for us flexibility in terms of care, in terms of technology and so on.

Brian: And so that approach affords us the most flexibility in serving these patients that are high acuity.

Bill: You’ve mentioned about the higher acuity patients within the hospital campus itself. How does that affecting or are you also building outpatient services?

Brian: Yeah, so the Josie wen and family center for advanced care includes primary care, urgent care.

Brian: As well as several specialties ear, nose, and throat and other specialties. So that is a second project that is also on our north campus. Many people think of those two projects, the hospital project, and the center for advanced care as one project, where for us, there are technically two different projects.

Bill: Gotcha. Okay.

Bill: Talking about all kinds of things that are happening in the future. I thought I’d go back and have you talk a little bit about the difference between the two hospitals that UC Irvine is gonna have now the existing facility that’s been in place for a number of years and the new one, they have to be quite different.

Bill: Don’t they?

Brian: They are. Yeah. And we see them as very complimentary. So we often get the question is the orange hospital gonna close? No, it’s not gonna close. What we found was that there’s a regional need for care in these specialties where people aren’t gonna drive the 55 freeway to orange from this region.

Brian: And so we needed to reach out and be closer to where another part of our patient base is what is really different between the two hospitals is the new hospital is designed with 36 bed patient floors where the existing hospital in orange uses 12 and 16 non-contiguous floors that presents many operational challenges where we build a 36 bed floor.

Brian: We can dice it up into 12, 12 and 12 or 24 and 12. And that affords us that flexibility I was talking about earlier.

Bill: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Switch over a little bit as well and talk about some of the sustainability things you’re doing on campus, obviously UC system has some mandates or recommendations in terms of sustainability, what are you doing on campus? That’s unique?

Brian: Yeah, UCI sustainability has been a priority for UCI for many years and will continue to be we have over 21 LEED platinum buildings on campus. Which really blows away any other academic institution really in the country, if not the world.

Brian: So –

Bill: That’s amazing.

Brian: We’re really proud of that. And now the next steps are really to go beyond LEED and carbon neutrality embodied carbon, things like that. So we’re really proud that our hospital project. The central utility plant is all electric. So the only diesel fuel we would burn would be for regional emergency when the emergency generators click on Um, we think this is really a game changer in terms of carbon neutrality for not only for the campus, but for the region. And we’re really proud of that. And there are other things we’ve done. Along the lines of lead treatment of water and low flow fixtures and things like that. Our hospital project will be lead platinum for Our child, family cancer center comprehensive cancer center and ambulatory care center will be lead gold. It’s not healthcare, so it’s a different model for that particular building. So that’ll be a little bit of a challenge for us but we’re really proud of our initiatives and that all electric utility plant, there were many people that said we couldn’t do it.

Bill: Yeah.

Brian: Or we wouldn’t do it. And the central utility plan is the furthest along part of the project so far. So we’re really proud of that.

Bill: Amazing story there, for sure. From a sustainability standpoint, you also mentioned about some unique aspects related to the site.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Brian: This site we really think is a game changer. It’s right along the San Joaquin marsh and from a health and wellness point of view, the connection to nature is really just unprecedented. And so we’re really excited about that. And what that has meant is we’ve worked with the biologists the UCI biologist that manage the marsh.

Brian: To ensure that we are a good neighbor to the marsh, not only will our infusion suites and cafeteria and things like cafe and things like that. Look over the marsh and connect to the marsh. we’ve taken steps to make sure we’re a good neighbor. And so that means we took guidelines for minimizing or mitigating bird strikes.

Brian: We’re treating the water in very careful ways that will go to the marsh. Surprisingly the biologists are really excited about water coming from our project to the marsh because the marsh. Needs the water. And making sure we treat it well and are responsible in terms of the runoff is really important, but we’ve even built little turtle fences around the construction site to make sure that no turtles from the marsh make their way up into the construction site. So we’ve really try to be good neighbors.

Bill: Yeah. That is fantastic. What a great opportunity for sure with that project.

Brian: Yeah.

Bill: Brian, thank you very much for spending the extra few minutes with us and so appreciate your time and all of the good work that you’re doing at UC Irvine.

Brian: Thanks so much for, including me really enjoyed it. Thank you.