Project category: Addition (completed November 2004)

Chief administrator: Sister Romaine Neimeyer, President and CEO, (717) 763-2100

Firm: RDLA Architecture Engineering Planning Interiors, (215) 545-8500

Design team: Joseph McCaffrey, AIA, Vice-President-in-Charge; Karan Hoffman, Associate, Project Planner and Designer; Peter Franke, PE, Vice-President, Mechanical Engineer; Christopher Brown, PE, Vice-President, Electrical Engineer

Photography: Barry Halkin

Total building area (sq. ft.): 132,000

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $250

Total construction cost (excluding land): $33,000,000

Ortenzio Heart Center at Holy Spirit Hospital offers the community advanced technology for treating patients with heart disease, and it applies that technology in an environment focused on the comfort, safety, and well-being of its patients, their families, and the staff who care for them.


When planning the addition, Holy Spirit had an opportunity to create a more welcoming entrance to the hospital, as well. Through design and carefully selected finishes, furnishings, and colors—also carried into the Heart Center—the light-drenched atrium connecting the Center to the hospital provides comfortable gathering places, such as its reception area, seating units, a café, and the relocated and expanded gift shop.

The Heart Center includes four operating rooms, three catheterization labs, and an electrophysiology lab. There are 30 Universal Patient Rooms, with 12 located near the ORs, where patients requiring surgery are assigned and prepped, go to surgery, recover, and are discharged—all from the same room.

Separate entrances facilitate access for patients with differing needs. Heart Center patients enter on the first floor; follow-up outpatient care and services for ambulatory cardiac patients are provided on the ground floor with its own entrance.

Designing spaces that are flexible, that can adapt to changes in healthcare delivery, is a key to today’s successful healthcare projects. Holy Spirit is no exception. Universal Patient Rooms allow the hospital to adapt, if necessary, to a broad range of patient needs. Structurally, the center also can accommodate expansion, including the addition of two floors.