The Pavilion: A day in the life

In late October 2021, the new, state-of-the-art inpatient building at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) welcomed its first patients. In the year since then, on any given day, hundreds of people—patients, staff, and visitors—come to the Pavilion for the world’s most advanced health care in a setting that inspires serenity and comfort.

The 17-story building on Penn Medicine’s West Philadelphia campus, which includes 504 private patient rooms and 47 operating rooms, is an expanded footprint of HUP. The Pavilion houses inpatient care for cardiology and cardiac surgery, medical and surgical oncology, neurology and neurosurgery, thoracic, vascular and transplant surgery, and it is now home to HUP’s emergency department.

In the center of a vibrant clinical and research campus, the Pavilion was designed to bring clinical care and research together, and to be a centerpiece of Penn Medicine’s world-class expertise in bold approaches to treating diseases.

A “future-proof” building with flexibility to adapt to changing needs was the goal in designing the building. That flexibility was put to the test during the Pavilion’s first year of operation, as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 first surged within a few months of opening. To meet those patients’ needs, a unit in the building was converted to all negative-pressure rooms.

But the future that the Pavilion heralds is truly just beginning, and the promise of that future is evident in the buzz of activity every day: It’s the warm greeting between colleagues in the lobby. It’s the confident stitching of a surgical resident who has just helped a patient breathe in new life from healthy new lungs. It’s the glint of hope in the eyes of the grandfather whose lymphoma has resisted chemotherapy, who will now use his body’s own immune cells to fight the cancer and win. It’s the next discovery being made across campus today that will save lives tomorrow, right here.

An acre of greenery surrounds the Pavilion, which has achieved LEED Healthcare Gold Certification for the overall sustainability and energy efficiency in the building’s design. The building is the largest certified project in the world to achieve Gold certification or higher in LEED v4 Healthcare (the latest LEED Healthcare rating system version).

The green spaces include both green roofs and ground-level gardens including the Harrison Garden (above), an area filled with native plants that connects the Pavilion to the Penn Museum.

The native and hardy species of plants used in these landscaped areas require minimal watering and maintenance. Overall, the energy efficiency efforts inside of the Pavilion are anticipated to save more than 14 percent in annual energy costs compared to merely a code-compliant hospital. The building itself also uses 100 percent outside air through its HVAC system, using energy recovery wheels as a tool to transfer heat and humidity in order to maintain fresh ventilation while reducing the loss of energy.

“I’m not dying, that’s for sure!” said Peggylee Giles, explaining her choice to wear sparkly sandals the day after receiving a bone marrow transplant in mid-August. The transplant came one week into her second extended stay at the Pavilion for acute myeloid leukemia; she expected to be confined to her hospital room for at least a month longer.

Features of the room that improve comfort and safety during an inpatient stay are especially critical for patients like Giles. During an extended stay after a bone marrow transplant, her immune system is not just weakened, but essentially regrowing from scratch. Amenities as simple as a pass-through supply cabinet that can be re-stocked with medications and linens from the outside, make a big difference.

There’s a fold-out couch by the window where her daughter can keep her company while working remotely, as well as high-tech amenities at her fingertips.

IRIS–a 75-inch screen and smart board is more than just a large-screen TV at the foot of her bed. The technology gives patients comfort controls for the room’s lighting, shades, and temperature. IRIS is also integrated with the health care experience. It shows information about each member of the health care team and displays their name, photo, and job role, as they enter the room. Physicians can project patient scans onto the screen to engage the patient and their family in discussions of their treatment.

And it lists each patient’s daily schedule and a daily goal. For Giles, on this day, that’s a continuing celebration from yesterday: Happy birthday to her new bone marrow cells!

Across the spectrum of cancer care, bringing together all of HUP’s inpatient cancer services to one location in the Pavilion is streamlining patient care. If patients experience any serious side effects or infections during their treatment, they benefit from critical care support and a dedicated oncology intensive care unit. Care teams can respond quickly, recognize signs and symptoms, and get patients the more advanced care they need quickly, including, if needed, a move to the nearby oncology intensive care unit. Patients can be treated with personalized CAR T cells, and they can take part in clinical trials for the next advancements of CAR T and other innovative therapies that may be manufactured in Penn’s connected facilities.

Imagine performing a delicate, complex surgery like an aortic aneurysm repair without using X-rays to see inside the patient’s vessels and move instruments and devices where needed.

In fact, endovascular procedures like this are happening every day in the Pavilion. Fiber Optic RealShape (FORS) technology, a new platform from Philips, renders 3D views in real time using fiber optics, without using radiation. It works by sending pulses of light through hair-thin optical fibers that are integrated within the instruments themselves. This significantly reduces radiation exposure for patients, physicians, and staff; enhances precision for minimally invasive procedures; and shortens the length of time in the OR.

The Pavilion’s hybrid operating rooms enable surgeons and physicians to work side-by-side and perform image-guided surgeries, like those using FORS, with greater precision.

At the Pavilion, Penn Medicine is one of only five U.S. sites premiering the cutting-edge FORS technology, and is also participating in clinical studies to evaluate its impact on procedures and guide improvements.

FORS is one of the marquee technologies in use at Penn Medicine’s first-of-its-kind Aorta Center, which provides interdisciplinary care for patients with aortic conditions, including access to cutting-edge clinical trials. And it is just one of the advances in heart and vascular care at the Pavilion. For the first time at HUP, teams from Cardiac Surgery, Vascular Surgery, and Cardiology are co-located, which provides multiple opportunities for collaboration and integrated care—including for surge and overflow planning and cross-training nurses in all three specialties. To keep staff trained in the latest technical and non-technical skills, a dedicated heart and vascular simulation center is embedded on the same floor as the Heart and Vascular intensive care unit.

Research and clinical care in neurology and neurosurgery are unified at the Pavilion. The 12-bed Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) has double the capacity of the former EMU space, and it’s paired with a state-of-the-art clinical control room where EEG technologists and neurologists provide continuous monitoring of epilepsy patients for seizure activity. Nearby, a dedicated Human Neurophysiology Research Laboratory is geared toward research and the development of new technologies based on insights from monitoring activity deep in the brain.

Natural light streams through the large windows lining the hallway as the patient is rolled to the operating room. A surgical nurse meets him at the sliding door, introduces herself, and asks him to confirm his name and what surgery he is about to receive. Today, he’s donating a kidney for his cousin—she lives nearby, he flew from several states away—and the procedure will be done laparoscopically, through a small incision. He rolls into the room, and after he is positioned and under anesthesia, the lights dim. The surgeon then gets to work.

The Pavilion’s 47 large operating rooms have space for large surgical teams and large equipment such as surgical robots. All living organ donation surgeries here are performed laparoscopically in order to ease the process and minimize scarring and recovery for donors, and a growing number are being performed using surgical robots whose tiny instruments, inserted through the small incision, are maneuvered by the surgeon working at a console. It’s just one aspect of the Penn Transplant Institute’s focus on encouraging living organ donation by enhancing the so-called #pennlivingdonor experience. A new Center for Living Donation at HUP is likewise designed to help make donation as smooth as possible, from the convenience of telemedicine for evaluation appointments, to local accommodations for donors who travel to Philadelphia.

Titled “Field and Sky,” a two-story mural designed by Odili Donald Odita is designed to “create an exterior space within an interior,” Odita said. “Each shape creates an individual landscape.”

An installation of objects from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in the Pavilion’s ground floor lobby shows some of the ways humans around the world have addressed healing.