Construction of Cape hospitals' new treatment centers on schedule

Tommy Wagnitz secures steel beams Tuesday on the new Southeast Missouri Hospital cancer center in Cape Girardeau. (Kit Doyle) [Click to enlarge] [Order this photo]

Construction on new multimillion-dollar facilities to fight deadly diseases remains on schedule for Cape Girardeau's two largest health care providers.

Once complete, patients seeking care no longer will have to travel far from home to receive the same level of treatment, hospital officials said.

"This keeps families together and allows patients to remain under the care of the expert physicians here in Cape Girardeau whom they trust," said Dr. Stanley D. Sides, medical oncologist and hematologist at Saint Francis Medical Center.

Most work on the foundation of Southeast Missouri Hospital's Regional Cancer Center is nearly complete. Steel beams to support the structure's walls are being installed.

At Saint Francis Medical Center, some concrete has been poured for floors of its Heart Hospital and Cancer Institute, hospital spokeswoman Emily Sikes said. Bricklaying has also begun for the building. Earlier in the summer a parking deck to serve patients and families was finished.

Construction continues on the Southeast Missouri Hospital cancer center next to Interstate 55 in Cape Girardeau. [Click to enlarge]

Southeast Missouri Hospital expects its Regional Cancer Center at 789 S. Mount Auburn Road to open by December 2010. Next to the recently opened Southeast Regional Medical Complex, the $33 million facility will place cancer services under one roof. Currently, the hospital's cancer services are housed in multiple buildings on its main campus at 1701 Lacey St.

The new facility, which hospital and community leaders broke ground on in January, will include office space, meeting rooms, a cafe, a resource library, counseling services and an on-site lab.

The 49,200-square-foot, two-level building will have an infusion center with chairs placed along a wall of windows that will give patient access to natural light while they are undergoing chemotherapy. The center will also include high dose-rate internal radiation therapy, MRIs and a system for digital imaging.

Meanwhile, Saint Francis Medical Center hopes to open its $84 million Heart Hospital and Cancer Institute by summer 2011, two years after leaders held a groundbreaking ceremony at its location in the west part of campus.

As at Southeast Missouri Hospital, most of the services for Saint Francis' cancer and heart treatments are in multiple buildings. The 208,000-square-foot, four-level facility will provide additional cardiac catheterization labs to provide relief for heart attack victims and more linear accelators to expand radiation treatments for cancer.

"By bringing cancer services together under one convenient roof, my fellow cancer specialists and I can effectively and efficiently treat our patients," Sides said. "The ability to quickly collaborate and draw from each other's expertise and experience will positively benefit the patient and their outcomes."

bblackwell@semissourian.com

388-3628

Pertinent addresses:

1701 Lacey St., Cape Girardeau, MO

211 Saint Francis Drive, Cape Girardeau, MO