Expanding A Legacy of Pediatric Care and Excellence in Nebraska

Since its founding in 1948, amid the polio epidemic, Children’s has been on the leading edge of pediatric care in Omaha and across the region as Nebraska’s only free-standing children’s hospital. This has led to steady, significant growth in the number of patients served and the variety of programs and services provided. Over the last decade, the hospital reached capacity in their existing facilities and decided to grow — in scope and space — to continue to meet the needs of children and families in the region. 

Expanding Services

This ambitious expansion transforms a confined, urban site into a 10-storey, state-of-the-art hospital that doubles the size of the existing hospital, adding 100 beds, new services and new and improved features, including:

• 17 operating rooms
• 20-room emergency department
• imaging center
• NICU and PICU
• 32-bed cardiac care center on-site outpatient pharmacy
• rooftop helipad

The facility also includes a hematology and oncology unit with its own dedicated floor. This planning and design feature was developed to improve infection control for immunocompromised patients and give patients a chance to venture beyond their private rooms, within the unit, as much as possible.

Integrating the Old With the New

The new facility is the most visible and colourful part of Children’s, fronting Omaha’s busiest corridor and integrating architecturally with the existing facilities. It reunites the children’s intensive care and cardiac care units, formerly across the street in another hospital, with the children’s hospital and its expansion. A unitized curtainwall envelope seamlessly ties the existing hospital to the expansion. Adjacent to the new tower is an expanded on-site parking garage that features a large digital media screen as well as a perforated skin that showcases shifting colors, creating a new face for the campus. The interior complements the colourful exterior, incorporating colour schemes and motifs from the existing buildings into the new spaces to unify the architecture and give the Hubbard Center for Children a dynamic and playful appearance.

New and Improved Patient Spaces

The design team developed an environment that is friendly and appealing to patients of any age, from newborns to teenagers. Common areas feature educational games and engaging diversions that bridge the hospital’s patient-age divide. Bright, playful colours and a creative lighting design are incorporated throughout the interiors like the vivid family amenity spaces that feature adjustable colour changing lighting and the care spaces that utilize soothing starry sky ceilings complete with constellation lighting. Each patient floor has a dedicated shape and distinct colour scheme for enhanced wayfinding and a strong sense of place. 

Large ICU level patient rooms built for flexibility, include amenities like user-controlled lighting to support patients and their families’ routines and comfort. Each inpatient room has an entertainment system through which families can pull up live language interpreters including sign language interpreters.

Family Comforts

The Hubbard Center’s design aims to provide a sense of normalcy and everyday comforts for both patients and their families by providing unique features such as an expansive cafe area, a chapel and meeting space, intuitive patient check-in/ check-out, and outdoor viewing gardens. A glass solarium provides space for events and an indoor garden for families and patients to gather and relax outside the care space. 

With Children’s Hospital & Medical Center treating families from around the region, it was important to include plenty of space in patient rooms and common areas for family. To accommodate long-term stays, often an important therapeutic element in a child’s recovery, the new facility includes rooms with more square footage, spacious enough for relatives to comfortably stay as long as needed. A respite area provides space for family members to decompress in close enough proximity to patient unit floors. The area includes a kitchen, TV lounge, 24-hour fitness center, laundry and locker room, a teen activity center, and 12 hoteling sleeping rooms.