A closer look at how we prioritize our employees, clients, and end users in our work.
At Creature, an important part of our vision is to improve people’s lives. One of the most impactful ways we do this is through the construction of Freestanding Emergency Departments (FEDs), a critical resource for communities with limited access to healthcare.
Freestanding Emergency Departments operate independently of traditional hospitals while offering the same high-level emergency services, making healthcare accessible for remote communities. Since their advent, hundreds have been built across the U.S. In 2023 alone, HCA’s FEDs had over 43 million patient encounters, highlighting the immense impact these facilities have in providing essential care. And, they are designed to handle a wide range of emergencies, offering everything from trauma care to life-saving interventions. By bringing healthcare closer to home, FEDs play a crucial role in improving overall wellness in underserved regions.
In just two years, we have used our building platform in varying ways in the construction of over a dozen FEDs. With that experience come invaluable lessons that position us in a powerful way to put patient care first, while executing at speed and quality that deliver immense value to the key stakeholders. Creature Chief Design Officer, Mike Gibson, talks about considerations he takes when designing these world-class healthcare facilities.
“Designing medical facilities can be a challenge for many reasons. One of the aspects that makes designing these facilities complex is catering to the needs of three different groups of people; nurses and doctors delivering treatment and care, patients entering the facility in various states (conscious or unconscious, ambulatory or non-ambulatory), and the patients’ families who may be bringing the patient to the emergency facility or arriving after they hear that there has been an accident. All of these users must be considered, in addition to ensuring that the critical, potentially life-saving systems are designed and arranged to be reliable in an emergency, maintainable over time, and accessible for future repair or upgrades,” Mike explains.
He goes on to say, “Meeting all of these needs in a world-class healthcare facility calls for an approach that is part art, part science. The complexity of FED projects lies in this truth: FEDs and their equipment are directly connected to our end users’ wellbeing and health. Multiple systems must work flawlessly together to deliver the care patients need; it goes without saying, then, that, in addition to being pleasing to the eye, these facilities must function properly and reliably.”
The art comes in as we execute the design in a way that allows for the project to be built quickly –– without sacrificing quality. We have seen great success meeting fast-paced schedules and achieving consistent cost, all without sacrificing quality, through applying the Creature Building Platform to FED projects.
When utilizing volumetric prefabricated modules versus traditional construction, we are able to standardize and organize the project, so it can be efficiently installed –– or “stitched” –– in the field. This is the science. To accomplish this, our entire team of designers, builders, and in-house MEP tradespeople must be disciplined and extremely accurate.
The accurate organization of the systems and components is what creates the leverage for a massive improvement in efficiency. This, coupled with a single source of responsibility, is how we achieve significantly better results over traditional methods. Our entire team and our building platform are working to anticipate challenges with the full process and the needs of the key stakeholders in mind at every stage. And all of that thought and planning benefits our customers, the project team, and ultimately, the end users — delivering critical reliability and quality to the healthcare providers, patients, and their families.
Over the course of our work, we’ve partnered with major healthcare providers such as HCA, Encompass, and Walmart Health to construct healthcare facilities, like FEDs, across the nation. Our experience with these nationwide clients has given us insight into what it truly takes to deliver cutting-edge, high-quality facilities efficiently that serve the end users with excellence. With every project, we further fine-tune and streamline our process using our Production System, ensuring that we’re improving the efficiency of every project. Our work with FEDs is a proof point for us that the result of any project worth doing should be an artfully crafted, strategically planned end product that benefits all of the lives it touches.
Interested in seeing how we can deliver complex thought and problem solving for your healthcare program? Contact us.