Allina Health – Abbott Northwestern Hospital | Richard M. Schulze Surgical and Critical Care Center

Transforming an Urban Quaternary Campus

The new Richard M. Schulze Surgical and Critical Care Center is the largest facilities project in Allina Health’s history and provides a new foundation for the future of the care system and hospital. This state-of-the-art facility creates a new regional quaternary care destination by consolidating three existing centers of excellence with a new interventional platform and bed tower. The facility will feature 192 new inpatient beds, 30 new operating rooms, enhanced dinning, amenities, and registration areas, all in over half a million square feet of new construction on a constrained urban site.

The HGA team’s approach translated user and staff experience research into well-defined experiential principles and design goals. The design complements its traditional urban setting with a fresh appearance that blends with existing architecture and transforms the signature Founder’s Mall into an inviting arrival garden.

The top of the interventional platform is designed as a roof garden to provide families and caregivers with a landscaped refuge and great city views. The garden is a central focal point for over 50% of the new and existing inpatient beds on campus. A new skyway connects all elements of the facility and provides visitors with dramatic views of the Founder’s Mall as they traverse the campus.

To prepare the hospital for the future of healthcare, HGA also established a new patient room and unit prototype that integrates enhanced technology, accessibility, and hospitality features. The patient room and unit plan feature the DIRTT prefabricated construction system that uses a universal interface with interchangeable parts, allowing for reconfigurations, adaptations, and adjustments, and a longer life cycle. This will be the first large-scale inpatient use of the product in the State of Minnesota.

The interventional platform provides new operating rooms and procedure spaces that address both patient outcomes and staff engagement. The operating rooms are flexible and adaptable to support rapid advances in medical technology and surgical techniques. Modeled through simulations to demonstrate operational efficiencies, the overall platform offers long-term flexibility to respond to the changing nature of surgical case mixes over time.

The Richard M. Schulze Surgical and Critical Care Center is an important undertaking that reimagines a flagship campus, revitalizes campus infrastructure, and optimizes essential services.