SSM Health continues to expand its building portfolio where the patients are, as one new medical facility is set to open and another has broken ground in two of Dane County’s fastest growing communities — Sun Prairie and Verona, respectively.
The facilities include a new outpatient center in Sun Prairie that is nearing completion, and another outpatient center in the initial phase of a new medical campus in Verona.
The centers are designed with new, patient-friendly features — and less of the old, cold institutional elements — in mind. They are located along key transportation corridors. SSM Health is working with general contractor Findorff for the Sun Prairie project, and architectural design firm Kahler Slater and general contractor JP Cullen for the project in Verona.
SSM Health, a Catholic, not-for-profit health system, serves the south-central part of Wisconsin through a network of physicians and providers and inpatient and outpatient care facilities. The organization provides care across seven hospitals, more than 60 physician offices and other outpatient care sites.
Jason Craig, vice president of ambulatory (outpatient) care with SSM Health in Wisconsin, said the locations are targeted to areas of population growth within Dane County, although one nuance with the Sun Prairie location is it will serve as a replacement facility for SSM Health’s existing eye care facility on Regent Street in Madison.
“That building has a fairly storied history with our Davis Duehr Dean legacy practice, but has been heavily used for many different decades and has served our patients and our staff very, very well,” Craig said. “But it also became time to look for some alternatives and in doing so, we looked to the Sun Prairie location, given that population growth and given the need to replace that building.
“As far as the Verona location, it really was predicated on the population growth within Verona itself, but then also just the overall volumes and activity that we see within our Madison locations on the east, west and south sides.”
Sun Prairie site
On the northeast side of Dane County, the 90,000-square-foot SSM Health Sun Prairie Outpatient Center is entering the final phases of construction and is scheduled to open for patient care in late September. It will provide outpatient surgical care, plus same-day orthopedic and comprehensive eye care services.
The $60 million center, located at 2850 O’Keeffe Ave. on the southwest quadrant of the intersection of Hwy. 151 near Reiner Road, will have direct proximity and access to mass transit and the local bike path network.
Craig said a more convenient patient experience factored into the design.
“We’re going to have some digital applications at our check-in area and we’ll have a self-rooming element within the Sun Prairie and Verona sites that allows for much more convenient accessibility and movement throughout the facility than what patients historically have been accustomed to within a traditional medical site,” he said.
With self-rooming, a patient checks in and proceeds directly to an exam room, bypassing the traditional waiting room experience.
WELL Gold certification measures, from the International WELL Building Institute, were used for sustainable design, construction and future operations
The WELL certification uses 60 measures focused on sustainable design and operational performance to certify that a building offers a healthy environment for occupants and visitors. Those standards include performance metrics for healthy air, water quality, thermal comfort and the promotion of healthy minds.
“I’ve spent most of my professional career in those old institutional settings, so this is a welcome change,” Craig said, emphasizing the amount of natural light that will enter the workspaces. “That in and of itself is a marked change from what historic medical facilities have had as design elements within them.”
Melinda Pogwizd, an architect with Kahler Slater who is the lead designer on both facilities, noted the building is on O’Keeffe Avenue and that famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe was a Sun Prairie native. As such, some of the wall coverings will emulate her work.
“We pulled from her ethereal watercolor art style and really brought that into the wall coverings throughout the space,” Pogwizd said.
Outside, several 100-year-old legacy trees were preserved during construction, and reclaimed wood from walnut trees removed from the construction site was used to create a bench in the lobby.
Another feature is one of the region’s largest carport solar arrays. It will have more than 1,900 solar panels set to cover the facility’s parking lots which will help offset nearly half of the building’s annual electrical energy needs.
In addition, a sustainable landscape design supports native species and provides a pollinator pathway for bees and birds, and a site reforestation project is planned for this fall in partnership with Wudeward Urban Forest Products. Native plants and grasses have been planted around the site’s perimeter.
Verona campus
SSM Health’s 40,000-square-foot Verona outpatient center, which will be built near highways 151 and 69 on the city’s south side, will be the first phase of a medical campus planned for a 97-acre site.
The new outpatient center, set to open sometime in 2026, will lay the foundation for the campus with primary care, lab and imaging services and a variety of specialty care services to patients in southern Dane County.
The vision for the site is to create a sustainable and healthy environment to serve current and future health care needs, but Craig said SSM Health has not finalized services or offerings it will put forward in future phases of the development.
“One of the really, really nice elements and the aspects of that development in Verona is we own a considerable amount of land and real estate within that setting,” Craig said. “We have just about 90 acres of green space that provides great flexibility for our future planning.
“The health care industry is changing so dynamically, particularly over the last five years, so that type of flexibility is something that we value greatly,” he said. “So, there could be a number of different options that we’d be able to use in space like that.”
Pogwizd said the design of the Verona facility will be guided by the same WELL Gold standards as the Sun Prairie center. Since the pandemic, she said there has been a focus on the consumer experience, which pertains to patients and visitors as well as staff.
“We know that in health care today, recruitment and retention is important,” she said. “So a focus on the health and well-being of the regular occupants of the staff is also part of the design.
“With the patient, there’s an expectation post-pandemic for a digital experience, a convenient experience, and better access.”
Pogwizd compared the self-rooming procedure to checking into a hotel.
“Having all of their medical records in SSM Health’s MyChart, they are able to digitally check in, and then when they come into the front lobby they’ll see two custom tables that are for that digital check-in and a greeter to greet them,” she said.
“It’s similar to what you experience at a Hilton when you get your digital key and you navigate to your room. They would navigate and self-room into their exam room, and then the projects are designed with an integrated care team model where the staff is coming from the other exam door.”
With the large Verona site, sustainability considerations include storm water management — with the help of an infiltration basin and a retention pond — the use of native plants, and the preservation of mature-growth, silver maple trees. Other trees will have to be displaced, but “we’re looking for opportunities in nearby locations to actually replant those or relocate those,” said Nick Herr, project manager with JP Cullen.
Beyond meeting the company’s energy efficiency standards, Herr said there will be some interesting features in the initial two-story, prairie-style building. He said that unlike the city of Madison, Verona doesn’t have an ordinance requiring bird-friendly glass, but it will be incorporated in some areas of the SSM facility to prevent birds from mistaking glass for the open air and causing collisions — without affecting transparency for building users.
“There’s a pattern of ceramic frits that prevents birds from getting confused and flying into it,”
Herr said. “It’s baked into the glass.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the general contractor for SSM’s Sun Prairie project.
