UConn Health Builds New State-of-the-Art Outpatient Pavilion
With a goal to standardize processes and optimize the patient experience, the project team completed:
• 10 new business support models
• 15 new clinical workflows
• 65 new updates to standard operating procedures
When the University of Connecticut’s UConn Health campus began developing a 306,000-square foot, stateof-the-art Outpatient Pavilion, it needed to ensure that the comprehensive IT portfolio would be seamlessly activated and commissioned during the multi-phased construction and move-in schedule. Burwood Group was engaged to create a rigorous IT activation and transition program to position the facility for a smooth transition to delivery of care as each portion of the facility came online. Construction of the Outpatient Pavilion broke ground in 2012, amidst heightened publicity as the first clinical project for BioScience Connecticut. The BioScience Connecticut Program is a multi-year initiative to create an economic renaissance in Connecticut by renovating existing UConn Health facilities, increasing medical school enrollment, and expanding research personnel and capabilities.
Construction of the Outpatient Pavilion broke ground in 2012, amidst heightened publicity as the first clinical project for BioScience Connecticut. The BioScience Connecticut Program is a multi-year initiative to create an economic renaissance in Connecticut by renovating existing UConn Health facilities, increasing medical school enrollment, and expanding research personnel and capabilities.
The Challenge: Align IT Activation and Transition with Operational, Clinical, and Construction Strategies
The new pavilion was being designed to house 22 different outpatient medical service lines, all with varying equipment and space requirements: from primary care and diagnostics to ophthalmology and oncology, to a comprehensive cancer center. Developing the move schedule required detailed operational planning, such as identifying dependencies between areas to sequenced or parallel move windows.
This dynamic, demanding construction schedule would require constant communication and collaboration among the project team members, executive administration, and operational staff. UConn Health’s Campus Planning Design and Construction (CPDC) Department needed a complete IT roadmap to include infrastructure specification, planning and implementation, along with project management and move-in coordination to ensure that each phase of the facility was ready for incoming occupants.
“Burwood Group ensured that IT would not be a distraction when our medical services began moving into the outpatient pavilion. The firm’s smooth collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders gave our caregivers confidence in the technology from day one. Burwood swiftly adapted to the dynamics of the project and kept the end state in mind amidst construction plans and schedule changes.”
The Solution: Comprehensive IT Program Leadership
UConn Health’s CPDC department and Jacobs, their program manager enlisted Burwood Group to create the IT roadmap, and then to execute a seamless IT portfolio activation and transition. The portfolio consisted of over 35 individual initiatives that spanned the entire IT lifecycle from conception to workflow development, to build/test, commission and activation for production use.
Constant communication among project team members was critical. Toward this end, Burwood Group established an IT steering committee and interdisciplinary end-user committee. This involved collaboration with Jacobs Project Management Co’s IT manager, UConn Health’s IT leadership, business staff, the engineering and construction teams, the BioScience Connecticut Campus Planning committee, and clinical stakeholder groups. A key part of the process included interviews with each end-user group to uncover their technology requirements.
Burwood Group helped ensure that the IT portfolio was aligned with clinical and business needs, and that construction progress was communicated weekly. Also critical was Burwood Group’s collaboration with the construction team scheduler to ensure lockstep implementation of IT, construction and move-in.
“Burwood Group’s experience was critical to successfully aligning IT implementation with complex construction requirements for multiple clinical areas. Their collaboration with the construction firm, clinical staff and in-house IT team was essential to completing this fast-track project on time.” - Thomas Trutter, AIA Associate VP, Campus Planning, Design & Construction, UConn Health
The Outcome: Integrated IT with Construction for Smooth Facility Opening
The new facility was unveiled in early 2015 with an extensive wired and wireless network supporting more than 2,000 networked devices, along with an upgraded security system, a new point-of-care communications solution, distributed cellular antennas, improved patient monitoring, and a public safety and caregiver call system.
Burwood Group provided leadership to manage an extensive IT commissioning effort to validate every component in the building prior to practice moves. This effort ensured that the all elements and workflows for each group were validated and that all devices and IT systems were ready and would not be an issue. Then as medical practices began to migrate to the pavilion, Burwood Group and teams provided round-the-clock support until operations were live and patients were being seen accordingly.
The new Outpatient Pavilion houses the majority of UConn Health’s faculty practices, including primary care, as well as specialty practices. It offers care in a unique, coordinated fashion; a patient can see a primary care doctor and specialist in the same visit and in the same building.
This innovative approach embodies the spirit of the BioScience Connecticut Program: to enable long term, sustainable growth based on bioscience research, innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization.
As of June 2015, the pavilion is fully operational and providing new opportunities to advance patient care for the State of Connecticut.
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