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The central aseptic processing department, where surgical supplies and tools are cleaned, disinfected and assembled on carts of boxes for the upcoming surgery, are usually downgraded to the basement or other non-patient-facing areas, which are not always available Scale to accommodate changing operating, equipment or storage needs, said Brenda Bush-Moline, vice president of construction and head of global health department Stanteck (Chicago).

Over time, these departments will be squeezed, employees’ final working conditions are not ideal, or facilities will seek other spaces to expand, which may result in central aseptic services being scattered on different floors or buildings. “These spaces are difficult to expand [staff] In the end they can only use what they have,” said Scott Huff, head of Stantec (Philadelphia).

Pennsylvania Medicine Trying to solve these real problems when planning its new pavilion, which covers 1.5 million square feet and will open this fall University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Hospital (HUP)However, the fact that the entire floor of the new 17-story inpatient building needs to meet its central sterility requirements prompted the organization to consider establishing an off-site department. Realizing that several of its existing buildings are also facing space constraints, Penn Medicine decided to build a 100,000 square foot Interventional Support Center (ISC) that will handle instrument handling services in multiple locations, including HUP and three outpatient facilities And Future Pavilion. “They believe they can build better off-campus space from all the sites and build better processes,” Huff said. Stantec led the project management and architectural, interior and MEP design of the project.

The new facility opened in February and is located in a warehouse in southwest Philadelphia. Chris Pastore, Managing Director of ISC at Penn Medicine, said its design uses a one-way forward flow, meaning that the used supplies arrive in the box cart and are carried out before entering the decontamination area consisting of 14 three-tank sinks for ultrasonic cleaning. Electronic scanning for tracking and disinfection. They were then transferred to an assembly area, where there were 28 ergonomically designed workstations, where the staff placed the instruments in trays for sterilization for future use. Pallets are stored in 20 high-density filing units in the facility, which operate like vertical conveyor belts, each unit dedicated to hospitals and departments. Every afternoon, supplies are collected for the next day’s program and assembled on box carts. These carts are staged in the dispatch front hall and picked up by the local transportation company, which is contracted to handle the ISC and each facility.

Pastoré said that although the state government still requires all facilities to perform a certain level of instrument processing on site, about 80% of the pallets handled regularly by the hospital will go to the new ISC facility. “By shifting our processing operations from the traditional hospital environment to off-site dedicated facilities, we are able to increase efficiency in a high-quality, cost-effective manner-while meeting growing demand,” he said.

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