When visits to the Grace Hospital's Emergency Department (ED) increased by 18% in one year, the Province of Manitoba recognized the need for a new, modernized emergency department to improve patient experience and flow. 

After the province selected ft3 as the successful proponent in a request for proposal process, our team kicked off the design of the new ED with a five-day LEAN 3P Kaizen event. Seventy individuals, including ED and regional healthcare staff, participated in developing the design through simulation modelling. This modelling proved a crucial component of the event, allowing a higher level of input from participants—even when addressing process changes beyond their control—by illustrating how different design interventions can dramatically improve a patient's length of stay and wait time while reducing bottlenecks in the system.

These planning sessions resulted in a new and expanded ED that is visually open and flexible while adhering to CSA Z8000-11 and Infection Control standards. Elements of the Nuka Philosophy appear throughout the space, realized through an open concept design combined with a large interdisciplinary room and 31 treatment rooms, including bariatric, isolation, seclusion, and gyne, in addition to triage, waiting, and sub-waiting functional spaces.

Meanwhile, a minor treatment area, and other radiology and lab functions, operates as a fast track for patients, allowing flexibility within the main emergency department during peak volumes. Colour-coded wall and ceiling treatments help facilitate wayfinding for staff, patients, and visitors.

With little nearby access to green space, the goal for the front entrance garden plaza was to create an oasis of sorts for patients, staff, and visitors on the campus while addressing wayfinding needs. Composed of a network of primary and secondary pedestrian corridors, varying heights of cast-in-place planter walls create the pathway edges, offering places to sit while providing elevated platforms for native planting swathes and site line maintainment. We explored and implemented Universal Design strategies such as ramps and staircases, including stainless steel double handrails for user ease and multiple expanded landing areas for passing and rest.