With limited access to funds, an aging facility and scarce provider resources, Bryan Health Merrick Medical Center, a Critical Access Hospital and Rural Health Clinic, was struggling with how to recruit and retain staff, make a more positive impact on the health of its’ underserved community and create a sustainable bottom line. Merrick Medical Center (MMC) partnered with Kahler Slater to rise to the challenge.

We began our careful review of service area demographics and health data to confirm community health needs and ensure we were aiming to solve the right problem. Through a highly collaborative virtual programming and planning process, Kahler Slater worked side by side with MMC leaders to leverage their challenges as inspiration for innovation, developing three guideposts that would define their success:

• Perform – Reduce wait time, transfer time, readmission rates and fall rates. Increase telehealth visits and responsiveness to community health needs.
• Optimize – Raise occupancy rates, energy savings and provider time spent on value-added activities.
• Connect – Build relationships with the community. Recruit and retain new talent. Capitalize on feedback with NRC Real-time patient and staff satisfaction, staff and physician engagement tools.

The new MMC focuses on enhancing wellness and providing comprehensive healthcare. Through radically flexible design, the new facility adheres to a high degree of standardization, hybridization and moves towards non-proprietary spaces – with every inch of the 51,000 square foot hospital optimized for varying levels of acuity and pandemic planning. The combination of universal rooms, hybrid functions, and unassigned spaces allows uses to flex up or down into contiguous spaces based on demand, resulting in reduced waste, construction, and operational costs. A central hub for cross-collaboration and shared staffing model create a more attractive, supportive provider environment. Anchoring the growing Central City wellness corridor, the new MMC promises to be a vibrant community asset for generations to come.