Matthew Gerstner: 0:00
This is Side of Design from BWBR, a podcast discussing all aspects of design with knowledge leaders from every part of the industry. Hello and welcome to Side of Design from BWBR. I'm your host, Matt Gerstner. On this episode, we'll be talking with BWBR Senior Planner Jessica Sweeney, who brings a unique set of skills to bear on our healthcare projects. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today. To start, can you tell us a little bit about what makes healthcare design unique and challenging and what are some of the special considerations that need to be taken into account?
Jessica Sweeney: 0:36
Absolutely. In healthcare you're designing for the staff who are using the space and the public who has to be there. They don't want to be there, but it's also a to be there, but it's also a market that is constantly changing. Sometimes it feels like that floor is just continuously moving and we're trying to design for something that exists now and something that may exist in coming years and ultimately, something that may or may not exist in 25 years, and so it's just incredibly complex. It's multifaceted. And then there is that lack of control. They don't have lack of control over their world.
Jessica Sweeney: 1:12
Typically, we're working with staff. We love when we get to work with patients to design, but that's not always possible. But the patients are the ones that have to use the space. And then there are outside players. They disrupt what our providers and our clinicians are trying to do, and we have to make that anticipation of what's coming. And then I think the final thing for me that makes it really complicated but really just inspirational is that healthcare is a backbone for many of our communities. We work a lot in small rural or even just smaller communities where oftentimes our facility or our organization is the biggest employer in the community, and so we are tasked with facilitating a design that needs to exist, not just should exist. It has to exist for the health of the community for the coming years and so that that health of our healthcare market, it drives the health of the community, both literally, culturally and financially.
Matthew Gerstner: 2:09
Oh for sure. What I hear is there's a lot of factors that come into play here, and it's not a lot of easy things. It's quite complex in how everything comes together. So what do planners do specifically within this world?
Jessica Sweeney: 2:25
I mean planners are helping to determine the what, how much, and start to think about the where. So what spaces are needed, how many of them, where should they be located, what should they be next to, and are driving conversations about how the staff and how the patients and any other people that are coming within the building need to use the space.
Matthew Gerstner: 2:48
Okay. So, Jessica, can you tell us a little bit about your background and journey to where you are now as well?
Jessica Sweeney: 2:54
My background before I came to BWBR. I've been here for about two years. I worked in healthcare leadership for just shy of 10 years. Specifically, the first half of my time in healthcare was spent in leadership, transformation, innovation strategy. So looking at a large organization, how they were going to continue to prepare themselves for whatever was coming, for what healthcare looked like in the future years. So in that position I got to work with senior leaders, c-suite, I got to work with frontline staff all focused on what did we as an organization want to become and what could we become, and all of the pitfalls that happen along that process. Change management a healthcare is a difficult thing. People are continuously married to what they're doing right now, which is great, right, they're experts.
Jessica Sweeney: 3:44
But we also have to you know, healthcare as a whole needs to figure out what they want to be when they grow up as well. And so, through that position I was really able to see you know how we're planning for that future of healthcare on that local scale and on a global scale, and that started that really drive in me to see what are we going to do? How are we going to fix a broken system or help a broken system or what, what are the steps that we can take?
Jessica Sweeney: 4:11
After that, second half of my time in healthcare it was as an operational leader, so I was managing a program and then a clinic and hospital, and so staff providers, patients and everybody across that healthcare continuum. I got to work with the boots on the ground. Staff, which patients, and everybody across that healthcare continuum Got to work with the boots on the ground. Staff, which is great. Trying to figure out how to support them so that they can do the positions and the things that they need to do. Try to remove those roadblocks that make it easier, because it's not easy and as more and more people are leaving the profession because of burnout, it's really important for us all to figure out how to make it easier to do the work. And so that was the nitty gritty of healthcare right Supporting our clinicians so that they can provide the care that the patients need.
Jessica Sweeney: 4:52
When I was in that healthcare operations role, I was a part of a team that was designing a large clinic, and so when the position came open here in Madison, I felt strongly that I wanted to be a part of a team that was looking at driving that future of healthcare, so combining that innovation and the sense of community that we have here but also caring about the success of the teams that are doing the work. And I think that we trend that balance, we kind of navigate that balance really well of how do we as an organization BWBR push our client to continue to move forward so that they are successful in the future, but also supporting the staff that are doing the work in the spaces?
Matthew Gerstner: 5:31
What exactly are your roles on a design project, then?
Jessica Sweeney: 5:35
We, we have people who know health care here, right, but one of the biggest things when I joined the organization um, you know a non-architectural background was we had a healthcare acronym and architects have an architecture acronym, and sometimes we say that in the meeting and healthcare is hearing one thing and architects are hearing another, and that happens more than you would realize, where one of our two sides is talking and the other side is hearing something completely different.
Matthew Gerstner: 6:06
Okay.
Jessica Sweeney: 6:08
And so in my translator piece I don't have the architectural background that the rest of our team have I see my kind of focus in two areas of one, and that's how staff and patients use the space, and so my goal is to help staff make the space as functional as possible and help our people make that space as functional as possible, and function is both how you use this space and then a piece that's becoming more prevalent recently. It's always been important, but right now it's crucial is how often we use this space.
Jessica Sweeney: 6:42
So, it's kind of marrying that Is this space really truly functional for the staff and for the patients?
Jessica Sweeney: 6:48
So we have a lot of operational tools, we have lean process tools that we will use to try to make those spaces as functional as possible, and then the other piece that we use to support that work is data, and so I have a key role in kind of analyzing data that's coming in, or trying to find data, or, whether it's from our organizations, from our clients, whether it's publicly available data, maybe non publicly available data that we have access to, or working with our data expert partners to really hone in on how we're going to use that space in the future, so that our planners and our others on the team can figure out what spaces we need, how many of them.
Jessica Sweeney: 7:32
One of the things we've realized is that healthcare costs are increasingly high I think it's growing faster than I know the general market is and so our clients can't always afford everything they initially think they need or initially know they need, and so we have to figure out how to make them more, make those spaces more serviceable, make them more functional so that they can build what they need to continue to provide the care.
Matthew Gerstner: 7:59
Okay. So it certainly sounds like you have a deep firsthand understanding of all the technical and operational aspects of the work that healthcare staff do. That is completely clear from your background and it really seems like having that will be incredibly valuable to BWBR in creating functional and flexible spaces, you know, to meet these needs for the staff. So do you have any examples that can tell us a little bit about where this being able to translate, like you said, has made a real impact in some of our projects?
Jessica Sweeney: 8:38
We're still working on the project, which is great. But we came into it and the client said you know, we're probably going to be building a new building and we're seeing immense growth and that's kind of what we're seeing, which is great, right, Like we can design the new space. That's going to be good for us, it's going to be good for them. We did Gemba walks, we went in and talked to the staff and through those situations we realized they had a lot of operational opportunities. And when we went back and met with leadership, even though they were in a position where they could do a new building and they thought that was what they needed, the operational opportunities that we presented them made it really clear that maybe they didn't need to spend that money right now. They could plan for it for the future, but right now there were other things that they could do that would solve their issues for not just the immediate term, but for the few, you know, for the next couple of years.
Matthew Gerstner: 9:31
Right.
Jessica Sweeney: 9:32
And so we saved our organization money, and we continue to build that relationship and trust because we … we're not going to tell people necessarily the answer that makes them spend more money. We're going to tell them the answer that they need to hear.
Matthew Gerstner: 9:48
That's a unique thing as well in a lot of industries. If you think about going to the car mechanic which everybody has that kind of a story you got the car mechanic that will tell you yep, I came in for a new alternator belt and now I need a water pump. You know just all these little things, so it's fantastic to hear that, you know, we're creating the client's rights. We're helping them see where their real needs are. That can make it more efficient and you don't have to spend, you know, an extra X amount of dollars to get there
Jessica Sweeney: 10:27
I have one other story, too, that I found was a meaningful piece of my position here. Um, I love going out and talking to the clients, right, I love developing those relationships. It helps with the change management. But there was a project that I wasn't on in that capacity but they needed some help to review the data, and I had. I had a free afternoon and so I took the data that we had coming in and I got to work with one of our planners and just give him a very high level hey, this is what I'm seeing with this data when you combine this piece with this piece. So it was, you know, maybe a, a re-admission rate or it was something along those lines where one program is growing and one program is decreasing in their volumes and saying, these are the questions that I would ask in that situation. These are the things that I would be thinking about from our healthcare organization strategic perspective.
Jessica Sweeney: 11:13
We love when we get our clients strategic plans, but that's not always something that either they have or something that they can share with us, and so sometimes we need to parse through those just small changes in data to understand what strategy our clients are trying to implement.
Jessica Sweeney: 11:30
Or maybe they're not even trying, but that's where the market is going, and so I just gave that planner the heads up on hey, ask these questions, focus on this area, see what's going on here, because it's going to change our plan. When we're thinking about what they need in five to 10 years, if the data is pulling their strategy in the direction that it looks like it is. We may not want to build these extra beds, or we may not to build this, not want to build this building, or we may see growth in this specialty, and so we need to make sure we're asking about that, because we don't want to set our client up for more beds than they need or a building that's not in the right place or not the right size. And so it wasn't that client contact, it was just that support of our team member so that he could go in and go ask the right questions.
Matthew Gerstner: 12:16
That's fantastic, cause I'm hearing that you're using your skills from your past career in ways that are directly working with and impacting our clients, as well as just bringing everything you know to staff in-house and being able to help wherever there's a need in projects like this. So that's just absolutely fantastic, and I think it's a unique role in a lot of ways, because I know we've got healthcare planners or we've got medical planners or we've got operational planners, but not everybody comes from the fields that you're in, you know or that you've been in, and that's a it's invaluable, I think, to bring that here. Are there any other thoughts that you would like to share?
Jessica Sweeney: 13:00
There is the idea that everything has a cost, and sometimes it's not financial, but when we're trying to figure out how to best utilize this space, the idea of changing operations has a cost, whether it's you know, they're worried about losing staff, they're worried about patients being unhappy because they might have a different process, and so there is that recognition from our side of you know, we're not designing in a vacuum. We're designing for real people with real processes and real illnesses or real lives, and everything has a cost to change. And sometimes that cost is small and very worth it and sometimes it's not and so it's kind of that piece of nothing is in a vacuum.
Jessica Sweeney: 13:47
When I was designing that clinic when I still worked for the healthcare organization, I kept our mock-up up all the way through until we were almost built and I kept bringing staff into it because it was a change. It was an infusion department and it was a change in the infusion rooms that, to the staff, felt really significant and it's hard for people to visualize space. It's very difficult to think about if something is changing, how much space you're going to get, and so I would bring them in. I would leave the cardboard mock-ups up. It was in our conference room for a while and anytime we would have. Are we sure this is going to be enough space? We'd honestly walk them in there. We had a chair in there. We said, all right, let's put a patient down, let's see, let's make it work. Because they, they, we didn't have a chance to change it at that point. Their infusion rooms are going to be what the infusion rooms were, but the staff needed to be comfortable with it.
Jessica Sweeney: 14:37
And so those mock-ups, they're great, not with it. And so those mock-ups, they're great, not just from the beginning. I like to leave them up all the way through, especially if you're making a change.
Matthew Gerstner: 14:45
That's fantastic and it gives the. It gives the client that firsthand perspective of what it really feels like to be in that space, and that's. It's something that is difficult, Like you said, for a lot of people to understand without actually physically stepping in it. I know we can do VR now, which gives you a better perspective of that as well, and that's fantastic. But for those who have a hard time visualizing space, any kind of mock-up, you're right, is 100% effective.
Jessica Sweeney: 15:13
Like I tell them leave it up If you're worried, if you're making changes, if you got staff cause, everybody has staff that are great advocates for their workplace. Everybody, every department, has staff that are great advocates for their workplace. Every department has staff that are incredible advocates for what they do. And if you have those people that are your thought leaders, that are your vocal leaders, you want to make it as easy as possible if they're going to make a change.
Matthew Gerstner: 15:36
Oh, absolutely. Well, I know you've given our listeners a lot to think about today, and I know we also couldn't be happier to have you on staff with the expertise that you are bringing to every single one of the projects that you touch. So thank you for being here and for all of your insights today.
Jessica Sweeney: 15:53
Thank you.
Matthew Gerstner: 15:55
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