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Forgive yourself if you enter the five-story Pavilion at Paoli Hospital and mistake it for the skylighted atrium of a grand mall. The centerpiece space of the $145 million facility, which opened in July, radiates the warmth of a coffeehouse. It's as welcoming to extended families as it is to intimate conversations.
High above people whose thoughts are focused on some of life's most harrowing curveballs, eight towering chiffon mobiles sway with the circulating air. They range from 6 by 10 feet to 8 by 16 feet, and each displays two vertical, intersecting, archival-ink photographs of natural scenes: oak trees, ginkgo leaves, the colors of autumn-dyed trees reflected in water, pine needles, snow geese against a blue sky.
"You'll see people just sitting there, staring at them," says Lindsey Felch.
Felch is the art consultant who led the installation of an expansive collection of photographs and paintings throughout a building whose every angle was designed with patients and visitors in mind.
After cutting 120 works from the pool of art, she chose locations for the 408 remaining pieces. She spent 20 hours strolling through the blueprints, hours more walking the completed halls. Initially allotted $300,000 for the project - the Pavilion, whose mobiles were made by one photographer, had a separate budget - Felch finished with $50,000 to spare.
Such sums are modest considered alongside the premiums some collectors pay for art. And a growing body of research suggests that the resulting vibrancy has marked effects on patients, visitors, and staffers.
According to national surveys in 2004, 2007, and 2008, art in health-care facilities - hospitals, in particular - can reduce the length of hospital stays, need for medication, and number of complications. Coupled with increased staff retention, that means hospitals have more to gain from displayed art than better moods: Thoughtfully selected and exhibited images have measurable economic benefits.
While the therapeutic value of artistic activities is widely accepted, it's becoming clear that the mere display of paintings, murals, and sculptures (not a new development in hospitals) can have a similar effect on recovery.
"Think about how you feel in a certain environment," says Anita Boles, executive director of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, a Washington nonprofit that helped conduct the surveys with Americans for the Arts and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. "Think about what makes you feel better, and what makes you feel less than better."
When Boles joined the society nearly three years ago, her father, a retired physician, said, "Congratulations. Now tell me in 30 seconds or less: What is arts in health care?"
"Good question," she replied. She called the members of the board and asked them to share their thoughts.
"I got 23 different explanations of what the field was. So we really recognize that in order to be able to talk outside of the field to other individuals, we have to have a strong definition of what arts in health care actually is, and why it's so important."
In the organization's 2004 study of how literary, performing, and visual arts and design figure in health-care programs, nearly half the 2,333 responding institutions had some sort of arts program, more than 70 percent of those in the form of permanent displays.
The supplementary 2007 study supported the findings and showed that the number of paid arts administrators had increased, as had the number of organizations funding programs from their operating budgets. It also found that diverse populations - Latino, African American, and white populations were the largest - benefited in nearly equal proportions.
A 2009 report on developments in the arts-in-health-care field acknowledges that much early research is "anecdote rich and data poor," particularly in assessing economic benefits, the subject of the 2008 survey.
The report cites Bill Ivey, former head of the National Endowment for the Arts and now director of Vanderbilt University's Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, who called for more investment in cost-benefit analysis to support saving "potentially billions of dollars annually" through arts programs.
Though there may be a shortage of hard numbers, examples of the effects of health care's changing face are getting easier to find.
At the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania Health System's 500,000-square-foot outpatient-care facility on the former site of the Civic Center in University City, the glass-encased atrium soars more than six stories. Even on cloudy days, light cascades through the ceiling and walls.
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