Medical offices put emphasis on aesthetics to improve health care

Patients have come to expect state-of-the-art equipment and procedures at medical facilities. In a growing trend, many offices and hospitals are embracing art and design, too.

Grand-scale projects such as the Frank Gehry-designed Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in downtown Las Vegas are only part of the push as doctors, dentists, optometrists and more work to break free from hospital-like settings.

Dr. Edward Malik remembered childhood trips to get eyeglasses as being boring. So he designed his Eyes & Optics optometry practice in Downtown Summerlin to be fun, with an emphasis on fashion.

He said when patients are waking up in the morning, he doesn’t want them to think, “I have to go to the doctor.” Instead, he hopes they think, “I get to go shopping for glasses.”

The retail side of the business features dramatic lighting and stage-like decor, while the exam space is intimate.

“I wanted to make it feel like backstage,” Malik said,“like being invited backstage in a concert with eye exams in the green room.”

Welcoming facilities may be lovely to look at, but can they improve patient health?

Attila Lawrence, coordinator for UNLV’s undergraduate interior and architecture design program, said in an email interview that “more than 1,200 recent studies have linked the design of the built environment to physical and mental health,” according to the Center for Health Design.

Industry trends Lawrence pointed out in Contract Magazine’s 2014 best health care design awards show that interior design firms around the world are searching for ways to accommodate clinical necessities while making patient comfort and aesthetics a priority. Designers of the top acute care winner, Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, were charged with creating a hospital as luxurious as a five-star hotel. Other winning contracts incorporated access to natural light, artwork, flexible open space, gardens and welcoming lobby areas.

Dr. Rex Liu wants patients at his Family & Cosmetic Dentistry practice, 2850 E. Desert Inn Road, to experience a “luxury spa feel.”

“Gone are the days of side-by-side bus station chairs connected one on top of another,” Liu said. “Gone are the old sliding windows in the doctor’s offices and the ability to shut you out. We don’t have to look like a hospital anymore. We also don’t have to decorate with dancing tooth figurines and pictures of teeth all over the place.”

Liu’s office, designed by architects who worked on the Palms, takes cues from boutique hotels with a waiting room accented by floor-to-ceiling windows, a round European-style sofa, a wall-mounted aquarium, work stations for patients and free refreshments and Wi-Fi.

The exam rooms feature windows that look outside into a breezeway garden. “Garden views, bird feeders and green views are better than looking at the blank walls,” Liu said. “Even our ceiling has artwork, mobiles and design work on it.”

Liu is convinced the attention to aesthetics improves his patients’ health.

“If it makes them more willing to come in, of course that improves their health,” he said.

Lawrence said the field for health care architects and interior designers is growing. He cited an annual survey compiled for the industry publication Interior Design that said in 2013, the top firms in the health care design sector drew in “$473.60 million in design fees that came from projects ranging from acute-care hospitals (which brought in the highest fees at $222.03 million) to assisted living (which brought in fees at $6.07 million).”

The study predicted growth for health care projects in the Western United States at 46 percent for 2015-16.

Lawrence has seen fascination with the field grow firsthand.

“There is increased public interest in the work produced by the students in the UNLV Interior Design Program’s health care design studio,” he said.

For more information on the health care design studio program, visit architecture.unlv.edu. For more on Eyes & Optics, visit visit eyesandopticslv.com. For more on Family & Cosmetic Dentistry, visit familycosmeticdentistryinc.com.

Contact View contributing reporter Ginger Meurer at gmeurer@viewnews.com. Find her on Twitter: @gingermmm.