Spinal Cord Injury Center Design Guide
July 1990 (Rev. Jan. 2004)
The Spinal Cord Injury Center
A specialized medical facility designed to provide a full range of care for patients who
have sustained a lesion of the spinal cord and/or cauda equina resulting in either
paraplegia or quadriplegia. Each patient assigned to this unit is usually confined to a
wheelchair or gurney and required special accommodations.
The purpose of the SCI Center is to concentrate these patients so that they may receive
maximum benefit from a specially trained staff and a specially designed, mission-
oriented facility.
Spinal Cord Injury Care can occur in three phases and SCI Center designs must
provide for their differing needs.
INTENSIVE REHABILITATION.
Stabilization immediately after injury usually occurs at the nearest hospital, with
transfer to an SCI Center as soon as possible. In an Intensive Rehab Unit, a
multidisciplinary team effort focuses on bringing the patient to the highest
function level possible. The goal is, after a stay of from four-to-eight months, to
enable the patient to return to independent living.
SUSTAINING CARE.
Once back in the community, SCI patients may develop complications requiring
hospitalization. It is the Sustaining Care Unit which enables that patient to regain
his or her independence.
LONG-TERM CARE.
Those patients who cannot live outside of the SCI environment because of socio-
economic reasons or lack of community and/or family support systems are cared
for in the Long-Term SCI Unit. It is common for these patients to stay until the
end of their lives, and thus this is an elderly population.
Patients are grouped into Nursing Units according to the level of SCI care required.
Intensive Rehab and Sustaining Care patients have similar design needs and can be
combined. Long-Term SCI Care should be physically separate because of the different
requirements for that level of care. A SCI Center may be comprised of Nursing Unit(s)
of one or more of the above three types, and again, if Long Term is included in the
combination, a separation must exist in either space or time.
Office of Facilities Management
3
Previous Page
