At Boone Hospital Center’s new Center for Advanced Medicine, aesthetics are part of a good prognosis.

Ed Pfueller photo

Boone County Presiding Commissioner Keith Schnarre, right, looks at a plaque in the lobby of the Center for Advanced Medicine at Boone Hospital Center during a reception Thursday for hospital and government officials.

Hospital officials worked for months to make sure the $20 million, 80,000-square-foot medical center for outpatient procedures and minimally invasive surgery also is part art gallery.

The facility houses 41 pieces of artwork that together cost about $150,000.

Carol Danuser, the hospital vice president and chief medical officer, led a 15-member Artistic Oversight Advisory Group that worked for eight months to pick out the art.

"I’m sort of a frustrated interior designer, so this was kind of fun," Danuser told an audience of hospital employees and local leaders gathered in a waiting room for a reception celebrating the hospital addition’s opening Thursday.

But the photographs, paintings and ceramic works are meant to be more than wall decorations; they were chosen to create what hospital officials call a "total healing environment."

"When you talk about the whole healing process - art, colors and design - all that makes a difference," said Barbara Weaver, chairwoman of the hospital’s board of trustees. "We wanted to incorporate those concepts into this facility."

The Center for Advanced Medicine brings together most of Boone Hospital’s procedures that don’t require hospital stays of more than a day. It has its own entrance, so short-term patients won’t have to check in and out through the hospital’s main lobby.

The facility’s new cardiac catheterization lab, operating room and the Harris Breast Center are already open. The new gastrointestinal lab will open June 1, said James Stark, vice president of Septagon, the hospital’s construction manager for the project.

The focus in one building on a combination of outpatient services is unique in Columbia, Danuser said. Danuser said the improvements were not an attempt to one-up anything at University Hospital.

"We don’t look at what they’re doing," she said. "It’s just that our physicians are on the edge."

Danuser said doctors’ requests for new equipment helped ignite the expansion. Today the facility houses millions of dollars in new high-tech devices, such as the three digital mammography units at the breast center. It also features only single-patient rooms with synthetic wood floors, couches and private restrooms. Having one patient per room is helpful "for infection containment, but it’s mostly for" privacy, Danuser said.

But such features appeared overshadowed Thursday by pictures on the walls. The hospital has even printed a glossy, 12-page gallery guide for visitors.

Weaver suggested the hospital should put its gallery guide alongside other local attraction brochures at the Columbia Chamber of Commerce. She said the hospital’s art collection could even become an attraction for people who don’t need medical treatment.

"It’s very possible that could occur," Weaver said.