MedStar Health, a 10-hospital system in Columbia, Md., stepped into the world of hospital fashion through a recent partnership with "healthwear" company Care+Wear to pilot a kimono-inspired hospital gown for patients to wear during their stay, The New York Times reports.
The redesigned gown, created through a partnership between Care+Wear and students from New York City-based Parsons School of Design, opens in the front and features a shielding pleat in the back, allowing for partial exposure through the use of snaps and ties. Made of a cotton-polyester blend material, the garment is durable enough to endure several washings and comes in four sizes denoted by different colored fabric swatches stitched into the collar.
Mark Smith, MD, chief innovation officer of MedStar Health and the director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation, told The New York Times the redesigned gown represents another way hospital officials can maintain patients' right to privacy while at the facility.
"The current patient gown, with the ties in the back, reinforces a power imbalance between patients and caregivers," said Dr. Smith. "With the snaps, you take it down and half of [a patient's] chest is exposed. You can examine the front of a patient without having to cover them up additionally. It gives you terrific access, and the patient feels safe and protected and comfortable."
Dr. Smith said the health system has instituted the pilot program at Olney, Md.-based Montgomery Medical Center, but will expand the trial to additional hospitals if it's successful.
While designers have flirted with the notion of designing for healthcare in the past, the scope of those collaborations have been extremely limited. Cynthia Rowley, a womenswear and accessories designer, created a line of hospital outfits for Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health during the late nineties, while Diane Von Furstenberg designed a limited edition patterned gown for Cleveland Clinic in 2010, the report states. However, design schools like Parsons have been slow to introduce hospital wear as a focus of fashion education.
"It's a large market that no one knows about," said Chaitenya Razdan, co-founder and CEO of Care+Wear, adding the number of gowns hospitals typically require is four to five times the number of patients who will use them.
A spokesperson for MedStar Health told Becker's Hospital Review Friday, "MedStar Health is committed to looking for better practices inside and outside of health care that can improve patient care and the patient experience. The hospital gown is an essential part of the patient experience that has been crying out for innovation for decades. Opportunities like these uniquely enable startups to scale innovative products and services, while helping systems like ours to best respond to consumer preferences."
To read The New York Times article, click here.