PLANO, TX—As aging baby boomers and growing population hubs require more healthcare services, continued emphasis is being placed on not only adding facilities but adding structures that include cutting-edge technology, staff collaboration in the design/build process and are close to the service area of the population. Joe Jouvenal, vice president of operations for McCarthy Building Companies' Dallas office, recently discussed those building healthcare trends, use of technology and collaboration with stakeholder teams in this exclusive.

GlobeSt.com: What is McCarthy's experience in healthcare and are you seeing an uptick in spending and new projects?

Joe Jouvenal: The construction cycle in Texas is robust and we foresee that being the case for the next few years as cities around Texas are growing. Population increase spurs the need to upgrade dated facilities and build new ones including acute care and outpatient clinics.

McCarthy's medical construction expertise includes hospitals, outpatient clinics, surgery centers and physician offices. In Texas, McCarthy has solid experience and established relationships with Covenant, Children's Health, Texas Children's Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, MD Anderson, Houston Methodist, St. Luke's/CHI, UTSW and CHRISTUS Health.

GlobeSt.com: With population growth in Texas, what kinds of projects are your healthcare clients undertaking?

Jouvenal: McCarthy is working with Covenant Hospital in Lubbock, Children's Health Orthopaedic Specialty Center in Plano, CHRISTUS Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi and CHRISTUS Health Trinity Mother Francis in Tyler.

Covenant includes three projects that fall under a $450 million facility master plan: 1) we just completed a 13,000-square-foot central utility plant that will support a future hospital tower, 2) an 18-phase project called PATH 6 which includes a 3,600-square-foot ambulance canopy and 5,500-square-foot MRI suite along with renovation and relocation of nuclear medicine and support services totaling nearly 28,000 square-feet on three levels of the hospital, and 3) constructing a 90,000-square-foot three-story dietary/endoscopy infill building.

At Children's Health, we are constructing a new medical office and surgery center that will house outpatient surgery rooms, MRI and imaging, athletic testing and performance training center, hydrotherapy pool, physical therapy and clinic space.

For CHRISTUS Spohn we are completing multiple projects at two campuses, Shoreline and Memorial, as part of the hospital system's $335 million master facility plan. We just celebrated the opening of the 42,000-square-foot Hector P. Garcia Memorial Family Health Center and are building the new 10-story patient tower at the Shoreline campus as well as new central utility plant to serve the new hospital.

We just began a multi-phased project at CHRISTUS Health Trinity Mother Francis in Tyler that includes a parking garage, new emergency department, bed tower and central plant.

GlobeSt.com: How does McCarthy ensure a positive client experience amid the complex demands of healthcare construction?

Jouvenal: As the requirements of medical buildings and hospitals continue to get more complex and requiring deeper levels of specific expertise, we rely on collaboration and teamwork with stakeholders especially on projects where work is done inside and around patient areas.

In large-scale projects for hospitals that serve much of the surrounding area such as Covenant Hospital and CHRISTUS Spohn in Corpus Christi, maintaining safety and communication is at the forefront of concern for hospital administration. McCarthy ensures all areas are marked with proper signage, fencing and wayfinding so emergency vehicles and patients are not encumbered coming to the hospital.

At Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, McCarthy had to relocate the hospital's main entrance which had been in use for 50 years as well as build a sky bridge over the main hospital street and allow for traffic to flow underneath as crews worked above. As you can imagine, without appropriate wayfinding and safety measures, this closure and construction project could have serious implications to not only hospital operations but patients and visitors as well.

We are also seeing a trend of more physicians, surgeons and nurses becoming a bigger part of the design process so we do our best to ensure a great relationship and open lines of communication with hospital staff, maintenance, engineering and administration. Covenant doctors and nurses were included in planning meetings so they knew what to expect during different phases of the project. There were 100 shutdowns scheduled that could have caused disruption to the hospital. We ensured staff and administration were aware of those shutdowns and steps that would be taken to ensure a continuity of care for patients. Nurses also knew who on the McCarthy team to call if there was an issue that needed to be addressed immediately.

At Children's Health Plano, our team created a full-size mockup of an operating room and invited doctors, anesthesiologists and nurses to provide feedback as to placement of tables, equipment, furniture and electrical plugs to ensure the completed facility will meet their needs.

GlobeSt.com: Other than working in step with hospital staff, what is another new trend in healthcare construction?

Jouvenal: An integral part of McCarthy's healthcare building process involves virtual design and construction, which is a method of generating and managing digital representations of projects via software. Virtual reality is part of McCarthy's design phase services and our team is focused on determining how we can use these virtual reality tools to best benefit our healthcare clients. This process helps our team resolve possible building/design issues early in the healthcare design process, which sets us up for future success. It allows our clients and partners to make decisions more efficiently, it provides cost savings, and it improves safety and increased collaboration on the job site.

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