Franciscan Health Munster keeps on growing and growing and...
Construction is scheduled to begin this month on an 83,500-square-foot, $46 million comprehensive cancer treatment center that will be one of a kind in the area, said Sister Aline Shultz, hospital chief operating officer.
“There isn’t another cancer treatment center in Northwest Indiana that will have the capabilities this will have,” she said.
The three-story addition will be a combination cancer center-medical office building, that will be attached to the hospital building at 701 Superior Ave. and connect to the outpatient service area. It will include:
- Radiation oncology treatment, with two linear accelerators for radiation therapy and oncology laboratory services.
- Medical oncology-infusion therapy; with a 15-chair infusion center for chemotherapy.
- A full-service breast center that will offer a complete line of services, among them mammography screenings and bone density testing; and a retail center.
- Four, state-of-art endoscopy suites.
- A pharmacy.
- A waiting area, with a capacity for 50 persons.
- Physician suites.
The project comes on the heels of completion of a nearly two-year, $70 million construction effort that included a new, 24-hour Emergency Department, 24 patient rooms, a gift shop, a chapel and a cafeteria-dining room. That project added 80,000 square feet of space and 40,000 square feet of upgrades to the hospital.
Concerning the cancer treatment center, Sister Aline said, “A lot of people go to Chicago for the kinds of services we are going to offer. We hope to keep them in Northwest Indiana. We will be offering university-scale cancer treatment here.”
