Perham Memorial Hospital & Home

Perham, MN

Perham Memorial Hospital and Home pioneered a culture change to improve quality of care and quality of life for residents and staff alike. The design team's challenge was to design a new addition and renovate part of the existing hospital to responsively support the culture change.

The design team actively involved staff, families, and residents, as well as consultants from Action Pact for Culture Change. The physical environment expresses the underlying cultural change — the old nursing model where the institution determined a resident's schedule and activity is replaced by a more individual approach to care. The design allows each resident to have more control over his or her daily activities.

Each household has its own dining, private dining, living, personal laundry, serving kitchen (combined with the activities kitchen), porch, soiled utility, clean utility, linen, and lift alcoves. Breakfast is cooked in the household, and the dishes are done in the serving kitchen — allowing staff to monitor residents, and residents to experience the familiar sights and sounds of cooking, and dishes being done. Adjacent to the living room and dining rooms, the kitchen acts as a focal point for the household, much as the kitchen is the focal point in a single family home.