Medicine: Pink Palace of Healing

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The most modern, most ingeniously designed hospital in the U.S. is the University of Texas new M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Houston.

Far too many U.S. hospitals are antiquated, inefficient and unsightly, from the scurvy brick of their exteriors to the .scaly boilers of the steam-heating plants. In crowded corridors the wagon bearing a sheeted corpse may collide with another carrying the patients' lunches. In most wards, with 20 or more beds, the quiet and relaxation essential to recovery are impossible, and even private rooms are drab, fitfully heated and ill-ventilated. There are some gleaming exceptions, among them the Clinical Center of the National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Md., the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Los Angeles, the Jefferson Medical College Hospital's new pavilion in Philadelphia. But no U.S. hospital has been more carefully designed to avoid the old inadequacies than Houston's Anderson.*

Flow Patterns. Conceived five years ago by its energetic director, Cancer Surgeon Randolph Lee Clark Jr., Anderson incorporates virtually all the features that any hospital architect, administrator or doctor has ever suggested to promote efficiency and comfort. The difference begins at the doors. Patients enter the building (shaped like a letter T, but with an added crossbar like an F) from the west, doctors and nurses from the south, administrative personnel from the southeast, research workers from the east, students from the north. In the wings housing the hospital's 310 beds, vertical and horizontal flow have been skillfully coordinated not only for the most efficient treatment but also to promote research and teaching. For example, a patient admitted for chemical cancer treatment goes to the fifth floor. On the same level with him is the research laboratory working on his particular type of cancer, along with the doctors studying cases of this kind and nurses who specialize in their care.

Projecting from the basement up to a portion of the fifth floor is the vertical "stack," in which all radioactive materials are handled. For these, like other hospitals specializing in cancer, Anderson has special areas surrounded by lead and concrete safeguards.

Host of Gadgets. To the patient himself, the most conspicuous features of the ultramodern hospital are conveniences and creature comforts. First comes privacy: there are single and double rooms, and four-bed wards—nothing bigger. Every room is air-and sound-conditioned. Each has a two-way intercom system connecting with the nearest nurses' station, to save time, trouble, steps and tempers. Instead of hospital buff, most rooms are decorated with restful greys or greens, punctuated with cheery areas of brighter color. Pictures are changed often, but when the patient can stand the sight of one no longer, the nurse can turn its face to the wall (the back is a contrasting but harmonious color). At the head of each bed is a radio outlet into which an under-the-pillow speaker or earphones can be plugged. Outside each private room is a sun porch.