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What Does a Health Village Look Like?
Healthcare Financial Management Association - Financing the Future III, February 2008 -
An excellent example of healthcare planning that has an eye toward part village green
and part mall is Metro Health Village in Wyoming, Mich.
Historically, as Michael Faas, CEO of Metro Health, was explaining, “a hospital would
build in a downtown setting and it would have all of these stores around it; family
members visiting patients might go across the street to a restaurant for lunch or stop
to shop. Often there were lots of medical office buildings nearby. But it was all hit
and miss. And I thought, ‘Why can’t you start with a blank canvas and do the same
thing, deliberately?’”
No reason, it turns out.
The first patients were admitted to the new Metro Health Hospital on September 4,
2007, seven years after Faas started putting his plan into action. He likes to think of
the new facility as “a courthouse in an old town square,” except, of course, that it’s a
hospital and the town square is a brand new, 170-acre development with three distinct
zones—hospital, medical, and medical retail—encompassed by a ring road. Plus, of
course, the D&W Fresh Market, the YMCA, the fitness center (day care included), a
hotel, and three restaurants in various stages of development. Oh, and parks, trails, educational facilities, and Olivia’s House (think Ronald McDonald). This site is platted
for 40 buildings, all of them to be LEED-certified, starting with the hospital itself, which
boasts the largest grass roof of any hospital—over an acre.
The old Metro Health Hospital had a lot going for it, including high rankings in patient
and physician satisfaction, a loyal market share, and, as Faas puts it, a lot of “unrealized
potential.” It was also landlocked and essentially invisible in a dead-end area of a three-
hospital town. The new facility, which sits on the highest spot in the center of Metro
Health Village, is hard to miss. It has eight stories, 500,000 square feet, 2500+ employees,
208 private rooms, nine surgery suites, an emergency department, a heart and vascular
center, full lab and diagnostics, attached professional buildings, and a price tag of
$150 million.
While unique in its setting, the hospital exemplifies a number of key building trends in
the industry as a whole. Frank Campion, whose company consulted on the project,
describes how these trends are reflected in three aspects of the building’s design:
• First, the hospital is laid out so the highest-use services are upfront, starting with
outpatient diagnostics, laboratory, and cardiology testing near the front door.
• Second, there’s a very distinct onstage/offstage organization to the building. The
public moves through and accesses services from the front, while staff and inpatients
move through the access services from the back; generally, the traffic never crosses.
• Third, they’ve built inpatient space at inpatient costs to serve inpatients (institutional
occupancy) and put outpatient services in business occupancy, so the services cost less
per square foot to build.
Key to Metro’s success in creating the nation’s first health village, says Faas, has been
Metro’s “ability to find great partners that will stand up with us and for us.” There are
six so far, including The Granger Group, which developed and manages the property,
and Spartan Foods. The hospital retains ownership of all of the land except for the
retail zone and has put deed restrictions on all the property. It also controls the
architectural board that approves all buildings before they’re constructed.
Although it has not put up any cash, “The City of Wyoming has really stepped up to
the plate and been an ally,” says Faas. “It’s had to commit a substantial amount of staff
effort just to deal with our proposals, including rewriting many of its existing rules and regulations. It’s really been an uphill battle for both of us, understanding each other,
because we’re creating something brand new here.”
