Project Spotlight- St. Luke’s Hospital- Upper Bucks Campus & Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital Campus

Construction Completion/Opening Date: Upper Bucks (Dec 14, 2019) & GSL (Nov 20, 2019)

Over 8 years in the making, MKSD is proud to announce the completion of both the St. Luke’s Hospital- Upper Bucks Campus in Quakertown, PA as well as the Geisinger St. Luke’s (GSL) Hospital Campus in Orwigsburg, PA.  MKSD has been working on concept schemes for the Upper Bucks campus since 2011.  Initial concepts bounced between a new hospital or a new medical office building.  Seeing the need for an updated hospital facility in the Quakertown community, St. Luke’s began design in early 2017 for a new hospital campus.  MKSD teamed with HB Engineers for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design, and Pennoni Associates for structural engineering design.

Once the Upper Bucks Campus was under construction, the unique opportunity to create a new health network combining area talents of the two major networks of Geisinger and St. Luke’s to co-own and co-build a hospital, was presented to MKSD.  The design of the hospital is closely related to the Upper Bucks campus with tweaks to align with needs of the new network and its goals & mission.

Each hospital is a 130,000 sf, 3-story facility with half basement and has a capacity of 80-private patient beds, 4 operating rooms, one procedure room and full complement of support and staff spaces.  Upper Bucks includes a 16-bay emergency room which is conveniently located off of several major highways, including I476. GSL includes a 15-bay emergency room and a helipad for Geisinger Life Flight.

Designing a new hospital for physicians and staff, who were accustomed to their existing conditions at the existing Quakertown Hospital, created challenges when trying to envision the new spaces.  The design team went the extra mile to provide full equipment plans, renderings, and even a full-size mockup of a patient room & headwall in order to get the staff to understand and get themselves comfortable with everything the new facility would offer them.

The largest hurdle for design of the GSL campus was modifying the Upper Bucks layout to align with the needs of a brand-new health network with no existing staff or physicians to guide the way.  MKSD and the design team was able to quickly turn around the changes necessary to get construction started on the 2^nd campus within months of the Upper Bucks Campus construction start.

The buildings feature the latest medical technology with layouts focused on patient-centered care.  The most important thing to both health networks was that the design improve staff efficiency while creating a more calming and serene experience for the patients. 

The operating rooms, emergency treatment rooms, and patient rooms are all designed for maximum flexibility as technology changes and advances.  Additional electrical, data, and plumbing services were added to headwalls in anticipating of upcoming equipment innovations.  Patient rooms are right-sized allowing families to be present and part of the patient care and recovery.  Finishes and lighting are warm and soothing, evoking more of an experience of being at a hotel than a hospital.  St. Luke’s even goes the extra mile to create calming public spaces such as comfortable waiting spots off the halls of the patient floor or the stone fireplace seating areas in the lobby and cafeteria to allow the family members a location to take a break and recharge while they visit their loved ones.

St. Luke’s has become known for their brand specific exterior design and thus the exterior of the building closely aligns with the networks two previous new hospitals at the Anderson and Monroe Campuses.  However, both Upper Bucks and GSL have interior layouts unique to their location that offer state of the art medical technology and facilities to continue the network’s commitment to quality healthcare with compassionate, patient-centered care in their communities.  They also tasked the interiors teams with again taking their brand finish palate and elevating it yet again to create a warm, welcoming, and hospitable entry and interior in lieu of the standard white, sterile environment of most hospitals.

With the completion and opening of the Geisinger St. Luke’s Hospital Campus on November 20, 2019 and the opening of the St. Luke’s Hospital- Upper Bucks Campus on December 14, 2019, we congratulate all involved in making these two projects such a wild success.  These facilities will allow the networks to bring an even higher level of health care to these two growing communities and MKSD was proud to be a part of it.