Construction is 80% complete on the $140 million cancer center being built on the Edgewood campus of St. Elizabeth Healthcare, and Northern Kentucky’s dominant medical provider is adding jobs at a time when some hospital systems have frozen hiring, furloughed workers or reduced pay because of revenue shortfalls linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The five-story building, which will encompass about 250,000 square feet, is on track to open in October, said Dr. Doug Flora, executive medical director for oncology services at St. Elizabeth. It will be the largest comprehensive cancer center in Greater Cincinnati, he said.
Turner Construction, which has a Cincinnati office, is general contractor for the project. Champlin Architecture of downtown Cincinnati is local designer, and Minneapolis-based HGA Architects is lead designer.
Also working on the project are CMTA consulting engineering, KLH Engineers, Graef Engineering, Rippe Associates food service design, CT Consultants and GWS.
“Turner has been exceedingly careful about protecting their workers, and their subcontractors have been great in terms of self-distancing and still getting the job done so our patients will have access to this place about on schedule,” Flora said. “The guys have been putting in long hours and working really hard. We all have approached this with similar passion.”
The cancer center will accommodate 200 health care workers, including 92 new positions. St. Elizabeth already has 9,007 employees.
“We are actively recruiting and hiring,” Flora told me. “We are growing, and there’s a home for people who want to work here. We have capacity for nurses, nurse educators, nurse practitioners, cancer researcher staff and nurses.
“We are actively recruiting physicians as well,” he said. “We are in the process of recruiting another dedicated surgical oncologist to help accommodate this growth.
“We have two more medical oncologists already hired to start at the end of July,” Flora added. “There are other ones we’re going to be recruiting. In the next six to 12 months, a surgical oncologist and thoracic surgeon to help our growing lung cancer program are our next two priorities.
“We just on-boarded somebody, Dr. Goetz Kloecker, a lung cancer expert who has elevated the discussion clinically and is starting to build a menu of lung cancer trials on our already robust cancer research infrastructure,” Flora said. “I feel we have the most experienced lung cancer team in the region now.”
Seven new directors also have been hired, up from one – including a new director of hospice and palliative care plus a disease management coordinator.
“We’ve seen an encouraging influx of really talented cancer fighters from around the region, recognizing what we’re trying to build here,” Flora said. “We’re hoping to hire as many people as we can who have been furloughed and need work. We need people who want to take good care of patients.”
Some current St. Elizabeth employees will transfer from other divisions to work at the cancer center, Flora said.
St. Elizabeth’s goal is to expand cancer prevention, genetic screening, a new precision medicine program, clinical research and treatment options in Northern Kentucky. Services will include: radiation and medical oncology, an infusion floor, radiation imaging, women’s wellness diagnostic services and a gynecological oncology clinic.
While St. Elizabeth logged operating losses of $10 million to $12 million per week during a state-ordered ban on lucrative elective surgery – as have rival hospital systems north of the Ohio River – CEO Garren Colvin has guaranteed that no jobs, pay or benefits will be cut at St. E at least through May. He’s hopeful that job security will continue in June, with St. Elizabeth ramping back up elective procedures May 13.
St. Elizabeth might have a couple hundred open positions at any time just because of retirements or people moving on, Colvin told me.
“But when you have the oncology center getting ready to open, we have to be planning early to make sure we have enough oncologists, oncology nurses,” Colvin said. “We’re constantly hiring physicians. I don’t think you could ever have enough physicians.
“One of the things that we’ve been tracking through this pandemic the last two weeks are the number of new hires,” Colvin said. “And I was pleasantly surprised to know that we’ve hired several RNs over the last few weeks. And that’s really encouraging for our future. It’s encouraging for summer as volume comes back.”
While St. Elizabeth doesn’t have a target number for hires at this time, Colvin said, he wants to ensure the system builds a culture in which people want to work and physicians want to care for patients.
“To this point, we’ve been successful in achieving those goals so that we are able to continuously hire,” Colvin said. “And we have a lot of growth that’s taking place in our system. You want to make sure that you can deliver on that growth. And obviously that growth’s in our physician organization and our oncology program.”
Construction of the cancer center began Aug. 9, 2018, and both the exterior and interior of the building are taking shape.
“We’ve got the travertine floor in the lobby,” Flora said. “A couple of floors are painted. About three of the floors look like you could walk in and polish them and they would be ready.
“We hope to take occupancy in early September, and I understand that we’ll need about 30 days to ready the place with regard to hardware and programming and planning before we’ll be able to let patients in with fire marshal approval,” Flora said. “So we’re looking to open up in early October if everything goes well.”
Some buildings were demolished to clear 4 acres for the new center’s footprint at St. Elizabeth’s 136-acre campus in Edgewood. The center will include a 638-car parking garage.
The cancer center is the largest and most expensive project undertaken by the hospital system. The St. Elizabeth Foundation has surpassed the $30 million mark in fundraising to help cover the cost of the cancer center, I was told.