On opposite sides of the globe, two pediatric health institutions, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and New Century International Children’s Hospital (NCICH) in Beijing, each decided to venture into uncharted territory by offering healthcare services to a whole new segment of the population. In Houston, the departure of St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital from the maternity care market led neighboring Texas Children’s Hospital to a critical juncture: to accept a larger geographic gulf between critical newborns and their neonatal intensive care unit or expand into maternity care, a service line they had never before offered.
In Beijing, JH Lanecare, one of the most prolific hospital networks in China, has provided pediatric patients international-quality, private-pay healthcare at its five-year-old NCICH campus, with protocols and facilities reflecting a drastic departure from traditional Chinese government-run hospitals. As the next step in a multipronged plan of expansion, system leadership eyed a unique opportunity in a rapidly growing neighborhood on the city’s edge.
In an inviting park, complete with a four-acre pond, they discovered two unfinished buildings originally intended for retail. They saw two jewels through which they could expand their model of healthcare, but this time for both children and expectant mothers.
A “new century” of healthcare in China
To meet the needs and preferences of a rapidly growing middle-class in urban Beijing, along with a large community of expatriates from around the world, JH Lanecare established NCICH in 2002 to offer unmatched service and amenities, along with quick access to preferred physicians for private-pay consumers. At its initial campus, the family-centered care model was branded by specific experiences programmed throughout the facility—from greeting and guiding at the front reception desk to attentive, personalized well-baby and pediatric acute care.
This strategy would be extended to mothers-to-be in the new hospital to create an atmosphere in which childbirth would be the experience of a lifetime. And this was especially pertinent in light of the context. With China’s “one child” policy, the birth of an infant is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event. Because of this, couples plan for their child’s birth far in advance.
Culturally significant dates, valued for the good luck they imbue upon the newborn, result in a high number of scheduled c-sections. The importance of child birth elicits extensive involvement by grandparents on both sides. Length of stay is dramatically longer, as the new mom enjoys several days of post-natal care. All of these cultural concerns were incorporated into planning for every step of the patient journey and every facet of that experience.
Working with a client in China was uncharted territory for FKP Architects, but that was, in fact, what Beijing New Century International Women’s and Children’s Hospital wanted—to bring international healthcare design innovation and patient journey sensibilities to its facilities. FKP designers studied the traditional Chinese approach to understand what aspects within the new facility would seem alien, to decipher what it would take to bridge the gap for the caregivers, patients, and family as they stepped into a new model of care.
For example, the traditional approach to birthing in existing Chinese maternity wards reflects a dated labor/delivery/recovery (LDR) arrangement—moving the patient sequentially through a series of sterile, institutional environments. The provision of LDR suites in the new facility was planned to reduce patient transport as a matter of patient safety and comfort, and was a welcomed improvement by the hospital’s staff. However, certain treasured aspects of traditional Chinese medicine were retained, such as the outpatient pharmacy stocked with Chinese medicines.
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