The Robert and Margaret Hill Breast Center, located in the Baptist Outpatient Center in Jacksonville, Florida, was designed to enhance the patient and customer experience by utilizing hospitality and retail design strategies. The center’s designer, RS&H, aimed to create a tranquil and spa-like environment with attention to furniture, artwork, lighting, and interior finish materials selections that are natural and organic in design.

The women’s health and radiology practice occupies approximately 20,000 square feet across three floors in an existing outpatient surgery center. The original building had two entrances, each with low, visually oppressive canopies, a circumstance that was confusing and unwelcoming to patients. The existing canopies were removed, and the entrances were reconfigured to provide a single building entry with a long, inclined glass cantilever canopy that offers visual openness and complete weather protection. The new entrance and unified lobby offer immediate respite to patients from the surrounding urban environment as well as a single point of control and easier wayfinding for patients.  Arriving patients now proceed through a series of tranquil, isolated sub-waiting rooms during the course of the diagnostic process to ensure maximum privacy and minimal contact with other visitors or physicians.

In addition, the center includes ground-floor lobby upgrades; upper-level lobby and reception areas; consulting rooms; exam rooms; radiology suite; and mammography, ultrasound, and stereotactic procedure areas. The space has given greater comfort to patients treated with advanced technology and procedures, including mammography, ultrasound, and stereotactic; core biopsy; and full function optima MR450w 1.5T MRI. The center was completed in October 2010.