The University of Chicago Medicine plans to build a $633 million, 500,000-square-foot facility dedicated to cancer care on its medical campus on the city’s South Side, representing one of the largest investments made by the academic health system for patients and the community.
The plan for Chicago’s first freestanding clinical cancer center includes the addition of 128 beds. These beds will be dedicated to patients with cancer, allowing UChicago Medicine to open other beds for patients with complex or acute care needs in areas such as organ transplants, digestive diseases, cardiology, orthopedics and trauma care. This, in turn, will help address some of the capacity constraints for the medical center, whose beds are full most days of the year.
As a critical first step, UChicago Medicine this week filed a Certificate of Need (CON) request to the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board (HFSRB) seeking approval to spend money on design and site planning for the proposed cancer center. This preparatory work is foundational to detailed planning for the cancer center and will inform its subsequent CON request this fall for construction of the building.
A significant amount of work is being planned around the patient experience and care-journey mapping, for which the participation of the community and current and former patients will be integral.
As one of only two National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in Illinois and the only academic medical center on the South Side, UChicago Medicine is uniquely positioned to reimagine cancer care for the community and the City of Chicago. The “Comprehensive” distinction is the gold standard for cancer programs bestowed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and recognizes the innovative research, leading-edge treatments, and extensive community outreach and education initiatives conducted at or by the organization.
“The University of Chicago has long been recognized for its strength in basic and translational research with fundamental and seminal contributions by our faculty to understanding the basic biology of cancer and its treatment,” said Kenneth S. Polonsky, MD, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs at UChicago. “Our health system is looking to build upon this legacy by establishing a cancer program of the future, where groundbreaking science and compassionate, complex care intersect to provide an unrivaled approach to prevent, diagnose, study, treat and cure cancer.”
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This story was first published by University of Chicago Medicine.
