Single home should help U.'s Cancer Ctr.

The Cancer Center will consolidate its branches in the Civic Center. Penn's sprawling, prestigious Cancer Center, currently spread throughout 41 departments in eight University schools, is about to come together in one place. With last Thursday's announcement of a bill that would turn much of the Philadelphia Civic Center's 19.2 acres over to Penn and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the 25-year-old Cancer Center stands to be consolidated into a single, world-class facility. University officials hope to combine the various Cancer Center resources into a freestanding entity on the Civic Center site, and eventually move all of its clinical and research operations there, said the center's director, John Glick. "It will mean a better integration of care for patients," said Glick, who has headed the center since 1985. He said the consolidation will be more cost-effective and easier on both physicians and patients, who will only have to go to one building for all their diagnoses and treatment. CHOP would use its part of the acquired 10.7 acres to build a separate research facility to further its own projects in pediatrics. And while Penn's main focus now is on securing the site, plans for the estimated $450 million development of the center are already in the works. Official plans, though, will first be drawn up sometime over the next few months, according to Health System spokesperson Lori Doyle. A new facility is necessary, Doyle said, because the Cancer Center has been a main area of growth in the School of Medicine, and "our patient needs continue to outpace the available space." Construction of an outpatient cancer-treatment center -- where patients would not stay overnight -- on the site is the top priority, with a research facility to follow after about three years, Glick said. The first phase of construction is scheduled to start this spring with the demolition of the site. The following fall, construction will begin on an ambulatory-care facility that will be the center for all outpatient cancer treatment, Doyle said. The schedule is contingent on the deal going through City Council by the end of the year. Currently, most patients enter the Cancer Center through its main "entrance," on the 15th floor of the Penn Tower Hotel. Depending on their physician or treatment, they may end up going to any of HUP's 15 buildings, Doyle said. "[A single location would be] much more convenient for patients and their families," she said, especially in cases, for instance, when a patient comes in for a follow-up visit and needs blood work or is referred to another physician. The outpatient center should take 2 1/2 to three years to finish, Doyle said, and then the second phase -- construction of a research building -- will begin. The increased need for space for outpatient care results from the huge growth that the Cancer Center has experienced in the past few years. Much of this growth, Doyle said, has been in outpatient visits. For example, outpatient visits to the hematology-oncology department have increased 41 percent since 1994. "It seems that we outgrow new space just as soon as it opens up," Doyle said. Another factor that Doyle said contributes to the outpatient space shortage is the general trend in health care to try to reduce patients' lengths of stay. And the center, one of the National Cancer Institute's 31 Comprehensive Cancer Centers, needs all the space it can get as it enters its second quarter-century. It was established in 1973 to organize and facilitate cancer research, treatment and education at Penn. The center's 350 faculty members -- coming from every department in the Medical School and eight of the University's 12 schools -- received a total of $93 million in federal and private grants last year. The center's patient-centered clinical programs are organized around interdisciplinary teams, coming from the wide range of departments that are represented. And while it is inevitable that a multidisciplinary "center" will be spread over an entire University -- administration is in the Penn Tower Hotel and some of the research is done in the Clinical Research Building, for instance -- Glick said he is optimistic about the prospects for the new consolidated facility. A more effective system will result from this "one-stop shopping," he said. None of a $100 million donation to the center last year from health-care tycoon Leonard Abramson and his wife Madlyn will go toward building the new facility. Some of CHOP's faculty members are affiliated with Penn's Cancer Canter, though their clinical facilities are separate and will remain independent of the center under the new deal. According to CHOP spokesperson Sarah Jarvis, the hospital will build a separate facility dedicated to clinical research in pediatrics. This facility, which Jarvis said will be built on a small portion of the property, will serve to expand some of CHOP's current research projects in areas such as children's passenger safety and drug dosages.