UChicago Medicine updates plans for the city’s first freestanding cancer facility

BY ASHLEY HEHER

The University of Chicago Medicine has updated its original proposal to build the city’s first freestanding cancer facility with an enhanced design that incorporates feedback from patients and South Side residents. The new cost and size of the project is $815 million for a 575,000-square-foot facility, with the ability for future expansion.

and afforded the time to get input from members of the community, cancer patients and survivors.

The patient-focused enhancements include a redesign of the ground-floor space as a community hub for cancer prevention, screening and diagnosis, as well as private infusion bays, a dedicated breast center and shell space for future growth and technologies that have yet to be developed. The facility represents one of UChicago Medicine’s largest investments in the South Side community.

The new cancer center would consolidate care that is currently spread across at least five buildings on UChicago Medicine’s Hyde Park campus, which is the hub of the academic health system. The plan also includes:

■ 80 inpatient beds, including 64 medical-surgical beds and a 16-bed intensive care unit

■ 90 consultation and outpatient exam rooms

■ A dedicated rapid assessment/ urgent care clinic to protect immunocompromised oncology patients from emergency-room visits

■ Infusion therapy with private rooms grouped by cancer type

■ A cancer imaging suite with two MRIs, two CT scanners, two ultrasounds, two procedure rooms with mobile C-arm and fluoroscopy, and an X-ray

■ A multidisciplinary breast center

The project’s scope reflects communitydriven, patient-focused changes made following the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board’s approval of a master design permit in March 2022. The permit allowed UChicago Medicine to spend money on design and site planning

■ Dedicated clinical trial spaces, for streamlined access to the latest research

■ A center dedicated to prevention, detection, treatment and survival, offering complementary therapies and stress reduction, community education and well-being support

“We will be building a model for groundbreaking cancer care and prevention established on the principles of access, equity, dignity and innovation right here on the South Side of Chicago,” said Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Chicago.

“With our long history of achievements in cancer and the great benefit of being interconnected with the University of Chicago, our new cancer facility will provide fertile ground for high-impact research so that we can tackle cancer’s toughest challenges, dramatically shorten the drugdevelopment timeline, deliver the care that the community needs and save more lives.”