Case Study: TriStar Centennial Medical Center
Affiliated with HCA and based in Nashville, TN, Tristar Centennial Medical Center is a 741-bed facility focused on delivering excellence in emergency, surgical, medical, pediatric, and women’s care. Their large and complex campus includes various connected and freestanding buildings along with four parking garages and multiple surface parking lots. In recent years, they have experienced significant growth, resulting in the addition and relocation of key services across their campus. Having recognized the need to completely overhaul their exterior wayfinding, they partnered with INNERFACE to work through our comprehensive process focused on improving their patient and visitor experience.
Design & Wayfinding Solutions
The overall scope of work for the project included a complete exterior wayfinding master plan as well as redefining parking areas/garages and developing a plan for wayfinding within those spaces. Being an urban campus, the potential footprint for exterior wayfinding signage is small. This, combined with the need for a larger-than-usual amount of messaging, created some design and layout challenges. Our experiential graphic design team, led by Studio Director Tim Hallman, worked to organize patient and visitor-focused information in a way that is quick to read and provides supporting visual cues.
In order to help organize the campus and filter visitors from campus entry points to the parking area, we modified and supplemented a campus parking color code system. Patients and visitors are guided first to specific parking areas depending on their desired destination. All vehicular wayfinding references these parking areas by color, and large blade signs are clearly visible at each parking deck entry point. Surface lots are easily identified through pole-mounted color and letter signage.
Planning And Implementation
In addition to finding the correct spot to park and due to the complexity of the campus, our team designed visual elements to remind patients and visitors to document the color designation of their chosen lot. These visual elements are further reinforced with new paint in most pedestrian areas and reminders to take a photo of the floor where they parked as they enter the elevator banks. Each of these signs represents the color of the parking area and the appropriate floor number.
Our design and project management teams worked closely with the City of Nashville through a complex signage permitting and street/sidewalk closure approval process. Due to the signage locations, installation activities are carefully coordinated to reduce impacts to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. We also worked to coordinate installation to have minimal impacts on critical wayfinding elements.
Future Plans
As part of our final preparation for implementation, our design team created a training/orientation program for all Tristar Centennial staff to help educate them on the new campus wayfinding and parking identification plan. Keeping staff informed and trained on wayfinding changes greatly improves the chances of them providing needed assistance and relevant directions to patients and visitors.
We are excited to have partnered with Tristar Centennial on this project and look forward to helping them maintain the accuracy of the program over time as their campus continues to evolve. For more information on how INNERFACE can help improve the patient and visitor experience on your campus, get in touch.
