Goddard Littlefair designs new generation healthcare offer for ‘One Stop Doctors’
Luxury interiors specialists Goddard Littlefair have completed the design of a £15m+ boundary-changing health and wellness clinic for innovative healthcare practitioners One Stop Doctors. The first One Stop Doctors clinic, in Hemel Hempstead, will set a new standard of excellence in the private healthcare sector, offering patients on-demand medical expertise, along with outpatient diagnostics (from blood, biopsy and health assessments to MRI, CT, digital X-ray and ultrasound), physiotherapy, dentistry and aesthetics – all located within a single ‘one stop’ clinic and available from early morning to late evenings and weekends, to fit with patients’ busy working lives.
Goddard Littlefair was commissioned for the project because of the consultancy’s expertise in designing high-end spas and wellness centres and creating the peaceful and reassuring atmosphere these require. The brief for the first One Stop Doctors clinic was to create an environment that embodied the instant premium touchpoints you might expect from a high-end service environment, whilst communicating the calm, soothing and welcoming feel of an obviously patient-centric experience, so that there is as little stress as possible at every stage of the patient journey through the space.
‘We were not looking for the usual clinical healthcare design’, One Stop Doctors CEO Ella Tracey commented, ‘but wanted a designer who could share our vision for creating an ambience that was relaxed, reassuring and tranquil, very comfortable and also aesthetically beautiful, but which still felt professional and reassuring to patients, so they know they are in the best possible care.’
The clinic is set within a two-storey purpose-built building and is a light-filled, airy space, arranged around an open, central courtyard. The interior layout, look and feel were all created as part of an intense consultation process between Goddard Littlefair and One Stop Doctors, aimed at creating a highly-differentiated leader brand within this marketplace for the first of a planned series of eight clinics to be located around the M25 corridor area.
‘We began the project by researching the private sector healthcare market in terms of look and feel’, Goddard Littlefair Director and Co-founder Martin Goddard explained. ‘We found that most clinics so far had followed the American model, with a very cool and clinical treatment throughout. Our emphasis was different – for patients to experience a much higher level of design values, maximising the contribution of the environment towards promoting a sense of well-being and creating confidence in the clinical excellence they will experience.’
The outpatient clinic has invested over £15 million in becoming a centre of medical excellence, offering same-day appointments and direct access to top consultants, GPs, diagnostic tests, dentists and physiotherapists, alongside a wide range of other specialist services. These include minor injuries, orthopaedics, cardiology, gastroenterology, neurology, endocrinology, well-woman clinics, men’s health services and advanced aesthetics treatments. The centre has 20 consultation rooms and features state-of-the-art scanning, X-ray and ultrasound equipment for fast, accurate diagnosis.
Furniture throughout is bespoke, which is a Goddard Littlefair design signature element and takes form in a range of high-end materials, including velvet, linen, leather and suede in a spectrum of browns, mushrooms, slates, taupes, blues, purples and greys. Lighting was also a very important part of the mix, creating features with natural and artificial light. Reflected and diffuse light help break away from typical down-lit spaces and create moments of drama and art.
‘We are absolutely delighted with the finished product’, Ella Tracey commented. ‘Staff, visitors and patients alike are so impressed with the elegance of the design and the attention to detail, but also appreciate the feeling of warmth and comfort that it creates.’