LEED Certification at Franklin Woods

Franklin Woods Community Hospital (FWCH) is focused on being an environmentally sustainable facility and is following the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – guidelines. The hospital earned Silver LEED certification shortly after opening and is one of the first LEED health care facilities in the Southeastern United States.

LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system, providing third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies aimed at improving performance across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

The building is located near a lush wooded area that lends itself well to views and a very natural design. The design includes rock formations that combine with water features to create a relaxing, calming and healing environment. This building is ideally situated and designed to provide patients, physicians and staff with a healthy, modern and natural environment. Recent medical studies have shown that staff members are more productive and patients heal faster with shorter hospital stays when exposed to natural light and open spaces.

FWCH highlights for LEED include:

• Exemplary Performance for Open Space – Ballad Health has set aside more than 40 percent of the project site as Open Space for the life of the building.
• Water-Efficient Landscaping – Franklin Woods Community Hospital is able to demonstrate an 88 percent savings over a traditional landscape design for the Johnson City area through the use of high-efficiency irrigation and low-water plants.
• Increased Ventilation – FWCH provides more than 30 percent above the required minimum ventilation rates described by industry guidelines, while achieving more than 16 percent energy savings in the building. Through innovative and integrated design, both indoor environmental quality concerns and energy savings were addressed on building FWCH.