Omaha VA is a Best of Year honoree

A LEO A DALY-designed healthcare clinic for veterans in Omaha has been selected as an honoree in Interior Design‘s prestigious Best of Year award in the category of Healthcare. The project was feted in the magazine’s Best of Year Awards ceremony, hosted by editor in chief Cindy Allen and air on DesignTV by SANDOW during Best of Design 2020, a virtual festival honoring this year’s design highlights and outstanding achievements.

The Omaha VA Ambulatory Care Center is a new-construction outpatient healthcare facility with a new connector building to the existing Omaha VA Hospital. The design uses a symbolic language of material, shape, color and pattern to express honor for the veterans who come to receive medical care. The north curtain “flag wall” resembles the folds of a windblown American flag. Colored glazing along the western façade creates light patterns resembling the “colored bars” worn by military service members. Smooth limestone walls delineate public waiting spaces from private clinical spaces. Limestone’s physical strength embodies “duty and security”; its sedimentary layers reference periods of peace and conflict; its stony composition embodies foreign soil tracked home.

Located adjacent to an existing, 60-year-old VA hospital in Omaha, this new outpatient facility enables state-of-the-art clinical care for 400 patients per day in a region home to about 40,000 veterans. It is composed of three levels and encloses about 157,000 square feet. The facility houses eight primary care clinics, including one clinic dedicated to women veterans. It also houses a specialty care clinic, ambulatory surgical suite and a radiology department.

Public spaces are designed to provide moments for respite, reflection and comfort, including an outdoor landscaped “healing garden.” Inside and out, there are individual, small-group and large group seating areas and ample views of nature. Inside, there is abundant daylighting, and commissioned artwork adorns corridors and waiting areas, each piece connected to local veterans.

Because primary care clinics see the most traffic and are frequently visited by people with impaired mobility, they occupy the lowest two levels. Surgery suites can be reached by elevator or stair to the third level. All clinics use Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) programming. This model allows doctors and nurses to collaborate from a central clinical core. They enter exam rooms from one side while patients enter from separate entrances accessed from public hallways.