Impressive New Clinical Lab Launches in Chicago Area

By HCO Staff

CHICAGO—Loyola Medicine, a Chicago metro area medical group, has just opened a new, 30,000-square-foot regional clinical laboratory facility to serve Loyola University Medical Center, its academic medical center, and two community hospitals, Gottlieb Memorial Hospital and MacNeal Hospital.

Designed to consolidate several smaller lab spaces across the three-facility system, and to significantly improve workflows and inventory control, the new laboratory is housed on the system’s Maywood campus of Loyola University Medical Center. The laboratory was planned and designed by HED, an integrated design firm with a long history of work in the healthcare sector, and built by Leopardo Construction.

“As a part of this project, we really focused on reimagining the lab team’s processes. We wanted to help Loyola optimize workflows and improve efficiencies, so the design exercises we went through focused on these kinds of major flow improvements,” said Aaron Shepard, a principal and project leader with HED.

Newly located on the fourth and fifth floors of the campus’ existing Emergency Medical Services building, the new lab features great daylight access in the open concept lab space.  Administrative functions are also located adjacent to the open lab, providing efficiency in specimen processing. The lab also features several major, new automated equipment systems, and was designed with these upgrades in mind.