Cancer center plans expansion
Published: June 12, 2005
The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute plans to invest as much as $73 million to expand services in Metro Detroit in a bid to increase early screening and treatment of cancer, one of the nation’s leading causes of death.
The plans include a $50 million expansion of the institute’s main treatment facility at the Detroit Medical Center in downtown Detroit and a $3 million add-on to its Lawrence and Idell Weisberg Cancer Treatment Center in Farmington Hills.
The institute will also build two new regional cancer centers in Oakland and Monroe counties at a cost of $7 million to $10 million each.
“The earlier we can detect cancer, the better chances a patient has for surviving cancer,” Dr. John C. Ruckdeschel, president of the Karmanos institute, told The Detroit News. “Our patient volumes are growing between 10 and 13 percent per month over last year, and we need the added room to meet the demand.”
The projects would create several hundred new jobs while offering patients faster service and speedier test results.
Patients who may have waited days for results from blood tests, biopsies and X-rays will usually be able to get answers on the same or next day, said Dr. Jeffrey Zonder, a medical oncologist who serves on a Karmanos team that treats blood cancers. Additional space for clinics and labs, as well as having more doctors available, will make it possible.
“That’s what’s happening at the very best centers in the country,” Zonder said. “If it’s not same-day service, it’s same-week service.”
Fast results are critical in treating aggressive cancers, as well as in calming patients, he said.
They’re also important to attracting out of-town patients, many of whom don’t want to be away from home for long. Richard Swift and his wife, Mitzi, were at Karmanos on Thursday for tests to determine the severity of a blood cancer likely circulating through Richard Swift’s body.
Swift, who lives in Hawaii, was diagnosed in May with multiple myeloma, a cancer that attacks the blood and bone marrow.
The couple was planning to visit Mitzi Swift’s family in Lansing this month, so they decided to get a second opinion at Karmanos. There, they learned that he most likely has a less severe form of blood cancer.
Getting answers fast has helped the couple cope with the ordeal.
“You’re out there wondering what’s in the future,” Richard Swift said. “It’s important to know things quickly.”
In Detroit, the expansion project would create a cancer-specific surgical and diagnostic pavilion, which would provide patients and their families with full screening and treatment facilities. Retail space and a level of underground parking will be added to the new facility, to be built in front of the institute’s headquarters on John R, near Canfield. The suburban additions will make getting care more convenient for thousands of people who live outside Detroit but must drive into the city for basic services.
Science will also get a boost.
“Research will be a main component of our expansion,” Ruckdeschel said. “We want to draw more full-time specialists in cancer research and treatment.”
The institute has hired Rossetti Associates Architects in Southfield to design the Detroit expansion.
Several million dollars have already been raised for the expansion effort, largely through philanthropy. The institute plans to announce its fund-raising goals within the next year, Ruckdeschel said.
“We’d like to start construction on our Detroit expansion within a year and have it done in three years,” he said. The suburban facilities will be pursued under roughly the same time frame.
Being able to have more centralized services was part of the motive behind Karmanos’ decision to separate from the DMC last year.
On most days, the Farmington Hills Weisberg center is packed with patients and doctors from various fields trying to avoid the crowded space they share in the heart of Karmanos’ building on the DMC’s campus.
The Karmanos institute cares for more than 6,000 new patients annually and has an annual budget of $200 million. The 1,200-person staff includes 300 faculty members from Wayne State University’s Medical School and is assisted by hundreds of volunteers.
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