A Light-Filled Heart Brings Care Closer to Patients

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Chestnut Hill Outpatient Facility was conceived to relieve pressure on the at-capacity care facilities located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston. This new site provided several synergies: convenient access for many more patients, collocation with other wellness-based functions and a facility configuration that would accommodate more collaborative team-based caregiving.

The project represents a significant achievement in the adaptive reuse of an idiosyncratic building into a full-service outpatient cancer care center. Eschewing a greenfield site, the team worked to adapt the structure to accommodate the program’s performance demands—while yielding beauty and delight. 

The renovation incorporated significant integration of design inputs from multiple perspectives: the patients and their families, the total care team and facilities operations staff. Rehabilitating a former mall to house everything necessary for patient care-imaging, exam, infusion, pharmacy, amenities, lab and support service-brought serious challenges with a tight budget and schedule. Nevertheless, incorporating gentle, diffuse light; the use of warm wood elements; places of respite; and the sense of a caring embrace became the project’s guiding themes.

The project site posed numerous physical constraints and challenges. Foremost, the facility needed to be both a satellite extension of the main Longwood campus and a distinct, welcoming destination. The program brief required replication of all patient care, flow, support service lines and functional relationships at stand-alone size, including diagnostic imaging. This required clever design to overcome multiple structural challenges present in the existing building: an irregular “retail” structural grid, a deep floorplate and dissimilar neighboring tenants and a central atrium.

After more than two years of occupancy, survey feedback from patients and staff returns consistent results. The thoughtful design of this light-filled facility improved levels of patient satisfaction and enhanced care team collaborative care.