Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center
The Challenge
This regional replacement hospital in rural southeastern Missouri was faced with an extraordinarily accelerated schedule due to constraints imposed by an existing lease arrangement. TMP and the contractor worked to design and build a brand-new, 250-bed, eight-story hospital in just 18 months — half the time needed for a project this size — and succeeded.
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Client
Health Management Associates
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Location
Poplar Bluff, Missouri
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Size
458,165
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Distinguishing Features
- Fast-track schedule that resulted in a eight-story hospital being built in 18 months
- 250 private patient rooms
- Enhanced technology and upgraded medical equipment
- A dedicated women's center
- Room to grow with Poplar Bluff and the region
The Design Solution
To meet the schedule’s demands, the all-hands effort required round-the-clock collaboration, real-time design decisions, and boots-on-the ground presence. Strategies included fast-track prefabrication and extended working hours. In fact, for more than three-quarters of the job, a TMP architect was on-site daily for instantaneous decision-making and collaboration.
The entire team worked together to mitigate risk and tackle any issues that arose quickly, resulting in superior quality and a solution that helped the owner avoid extending the current lease with additional costs.
The building itself includes a total of eight stories with an additional mechanical penthouse floor. The main entrance welcomes visitors and patients with a monumental staircase that leads to the ground-level dining area. An emergency department, outpatient surgery, surgical services, post-anesthesia care unit, and imaging are located on the first floor, while subsequent floors include operating rooms, a hybrid operating suite, an intensive care unit, women’s center, and private patient rooms.
Adjustable acuity patient rooms located on the second floor allow the hospital to be flexible in the level of care, switching between intensive and critical unit functions without having to move patients to different rooms.
The Design Impact
Stepping up to solve the owner’s problem at scale, the design and construction team delivered an excellent-quality building with an extremely fast schedule on time and within budget.
Additionally, the facility transformed the delivery of hospital care in and around the rural community, offering advanced medical technology, easier accessibility, and expansion of healthcare services.
