Wellness, LLC Honored At Symposium On Healthcare Design.

Business Editors, Health/Medical Writers

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BW HealthWire)--Jan. 17, 2001

For the second year in a row, Wellness, LLC of Nashville has been honored at the Nightingale Awards presented by The Symposium on Healthcare Design Conference and Exposition.

Wellness received an Honorable Mention for the Wellness Room(TM) Canopy at the December, 2000 conference in California. In 1999, the company received the Nightingale Award for Best of Show.

The canopy is an exclusive feature of The Wellness Room, a modular patient room designed to promote healing. This over-the-bed canopy is designed with both the patient and hospital staff in mind. It features backlit artwork of a nature scene for patients to view, reading lights and examination lights for nursing procedures. The artwork and the reading lights can be controlled by the patient from the bed, as can other features of The Wellness Room. The canopy also provides the heating and air conditioning supply outlet, diffusing air gently around the room and not directly down on the patient.

Patients, family members and staff ranked the canopy very high in a pilot study recently conducted to measure the satisfaction with The Wellness Room. Using a scale from zero to 10, with zero being extremely poor and 10 being excellent, patients, their family members and staff gave the canopy ratings between 8.6 and 9.8. Lighting was rated at 9.5 or higher by all groups.

"We are excited to again be recognized by top executives in the health care design field," said H. Bart Franey, CEO of Wellness. "This continued endorsement of our product re-affirms our research that indicates that the elements in our rooms promote staff efficiency as well as patient healing."

The Nightingale Awards, founded in 1992, are sponsored by Facilities Design & Management magazine and Imark Communications in association with The Center for Health Design. The awards recognize innovative products that contribute to the quality of health care. Past winners have included Armstrong World Industries, Thonet, HEWI and Nemschoff Chairs. A national panel of six health care facilities judges, including architects and interior designers, selected the winners.

The Wellness Room comes as a total package that includes lighting, artwork, walls complete with doors, trim and vinyl finishes, furnishings that support family care, an in-room nurse's station and an ADA compliant bathroom. They are designed to promote healing and staff efficiency while offering solutions to construction challenges ranging from time to cost. The rooms can be installed in 50 percent less time than conventional construction, qualify for accelerated depreciation and can be leased or purchased.

The first large-scale installation of The Wellness Room is underway at United Medical Center in Cheyenne, Wy. As part of the hospital's construction project, 120 Wellness Rooms will be installed.