Clarian North Medical Center
Indiana Population Growth Drives Project
by Steve Kaelble

It makes sense for Clarian Health Partners of Indianapolis to build a new hospital in Carmel, a rapidly growing suburb to the north.

advertisement

The town is located at the southern end of Hamilton County. With a population of 216,826 as of mid-2003, the latest census figure available, the county has grown nearly 19 percent so far this decade, a rate that places it among the nation's 25 fastest-growing counties.

Carmel itself saw 49 percent population growth during the 1990s and has added another 14 percent since then for a current total of 43,083 residents.

Such demographics are just what the doctor ordered, according to Jon Goble, president and CEO of the new $225 million Clarian North Medical Center under construction at 116th and Meridian streets in Carmel. Though Clarian
Health Partners is Indiana's largest health-care organization, its three primary facilities are in downtown Indianapolis, and "the growth in this market is going on outside of downtown," Goble added.

He said Clarian North is part of "an attempt to bring Clarian-quality health care to the suburban market." The project follows on the heels of the recently opened Clarian West Medical Center, located on the west side of the metropolitan area in Avon.

Construction on the Carmel facility is scheduled to be complete by the beginning of September, and the opening is slated for December.

Has Multiple Structures

The Clarian North project includes a pair of connected buildings encompassing 627,000 sq. ft., said Steve Allemeier, project executive for Pepper Construction of Indiana LLC, the construction manager. Located on a 56-acre site that will include grade-level parking for 1,500 people, the facility will feature an acute-care hospital and a 156,000-sq.-ft. medical office building.

The buildings will be connected by a five-story atrium with clear glass skylights.

Both buildings will include five levels above ground, and the hospital side will add a lower level.

The facility will include about 170 beds for now and an as-yet-undetermined number of physician offices, Goble said. Expansion is a good possibility, he added.

"The property will support 1.4 million sq. ft.," he said.
Clarian North Medical Center will offer a wide range of services.

"Our intent is to take whatever can be supported in the Carmel market and put it in," Goble said. That includes typical emergency services and intensive care along with three particular areas of emphasis: women's services, children's services and specialty surgery.

Women's services will include obstetrics, gynecologic surgery and breast care.

For children's services, Clarian North will partner with downtown Indianapolis Clarian sibling Riley Hospital for Children to offer a range of services, including newborn and pediatric intensive care.

"For specialty surgery we will be focusing on our minimally invasive center of excellence, bringing the latest and greatest scope procedures to the market, along with such things as bariatric surgery," Goble said.

In addition to bringing services to the growing parts of the Indianapolis area, the health-care organization hopes the suburban services will act as a fiscal balance against some of its expensive downtown services, according to Clarian Health Partners CEO Daniel Evans.

Clarian operates Methodist Hospital, which includes a Level One trauma center, along with the advanced and research-intensive offerings of Indiana University Hospital and the highly regarded pediatric services of Riley Hospital for Children. Adding more profitable services in the surrounding area helps to offset important but money-losing services downtown.

'Healing Garden'

From a design standpoint, the central theme at Clarian North "is the concept of a healing garden," said Teresa Davis, project architect for Dallas-based HKS Inc.

That concept will manifest itself in a number of ways. For example, the healing-garden idea meant designing the building so that whenever possible patients can look outside and see landscaping, and "doing roof gardens that become spaces where you can see vegetation out there and also go out there and enjoy it," Davis said.

The healing-garden theme carries on inside the buildings in etched-glass accents with grass images, and the atrium will be a streetscape with light posts and trees, overlooked by both patient rooms and medical offices, Davis said.

"The structure is structural steel, and there's an Indiana-limestone band 16 ft. high all the way around," Allemeier said. "The balance of the skin is brick with punched windows and curtain wall."

Addressing Steel Prices

Construction began in September 2003, and Allemeier said the project's timing allowed it to miss out on the recent explosion in steel prices.

"We started when the market was very favorable and were fortunate to have the project bid awarded and the majority of steel in place" prior to the price increases, he added. "The impact we have felt has been in fire protection and conduit, but it has really ended up being a minor cost."

Mock-ups Built

A significant-yet-needed cost has been the construction of mock-up rooms.

In an office building across the street from the construction site, Pepper built replicas of several key hospital areas, including a labor/delivery room, two neonatal intensive care rooms, a pediatric intensive care room and a medical/surgical room.

"They're completely furnished, to allow doctors, nurses and other groups of users to go and really pick them apart," Allemeier said. "A couple of hundred people have gone through."

Goble called the mock-up process phenomenal. "It's allowed us to perfect the layout and design," he added. "In three dimensions it looks different from two dimensions on paper. We have tweaked gas locations, equipment in the room, where things are put on the wall," along with the location of data ports, monitors and the like.

And Allemeier said, "We may have spent several hundred thousand dollars on the mock-up rooms, but that will save millions of dollars in the future."

The gas locations that Goble described are the oxygen, medical air and vacuum lines that must be run throughout the facility. Allemeier said their placement required about six months of coordination among the trades. "We had a project manager on staff who spent six months with the MEP and fire protection, covering everything that goes above the ceiling and in the walls," he said.

Floor-to-floor height measures 15 ft., 4 in., "but here that's not that much space, and there is a lot crammed into it," Allemeier said.

Hospital construction also requires extra attention to details related to health.

"We have a lot of seamless flooring, so that if any bodily fluids get on the floor they can be easily cleaned," he said. "And during construction, every open end of ductwork has to be delivered and sealed in plastic to keep the inside of the duct clean."