New Medical Oncology Clinic Opening Adds to Expert Cancer Care Services for North Seattle Community
SEATTLE — June 19, 2014 — Patients in north Seattle and north King County communities can receive expert cancer care closer to home from Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) at UW Medicine’s Northwest Hospital & Medical Center campus. The new clinic joins SCCA Radiation Oncology, which has provided services at Northwest Hospital for the past several years.
“At SCCA we pride ourselves on providing world-class cancer care for our patients and we are proud to expand this care in north Seattle,” said Norm Hubbard, executive vice president of SCCA. “We look forward to bringing SCCA cancer services in a new and innovative way to the North End community.”
SCCA at Northwest Hospital will offer a variety of services, including medical oncology, hematology and radiation oncology, provided by leading medical and radiation oncologists from UW Medicine. Additionally, cancer patients who receive care from SCCA at Northwest Hospital have access to clinical trials on the latest and most innovative treatment options, conducted by researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and UW Medicine. For many patients, these clinical trials offer treatments that are not available elsewhere in the community and may be the best chance for a cure.
“SCCA Radiation Oncology has provided outstanding care to our patients for the past several years, and we are delighted to add SCCA Medical Oncology to our comprehensive cancer program,” said Cindy Hecker, executive director at Northwest Hospital. “Our goal has always been to offer our community exceptional cancer care, close to home."
To develop the new medical oncology clinic, designers used a unique approach called integrated facility design. The goal of this approach is to improve the patient’s experience by creating a treatment space focused on efficient and personal patient care. Instead of simply working within the existing pre-built space, the design team created a life-size model of the clinical space out of cardboard and examined a variety of factors that could improve the typical patient experience. From changing the location of a door to setting up universal treatment rooms where patients can have appointments and procedures in the same room, every inch of the clinic was designed with the patient’s needs in mind.
“The design of this clinic is a very novel approach that has generated a lot of excitement among the physicians and staff involved in its implementation,” said Oliver Press MD, PhD, a UW Medicine physician specializing in lymphomas who also serves as the director of the clinical research division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “I am optimistic it will create a user friendly clinic that will benefit both the patients and physicians.”
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