Swedish Opens Comprehensive Women's Cancer Center Today

– New $11 million True Family Women's Cancer Center, which was entirely funded through donations, to provide coordinated cancer care to women throughout the Puget Sound region

SEATTLE, June 5, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Swedish Cancer Institute (SCI) opens its new True Family Women's Cancer Center to patients today. Carefully designed with the female cancer patient in mind, the new 23,600-square-foot women's cancer center gives Swedish Cancer Institute the ability to consolidate most of its services for treating women's cancers into one facility. The new center acts as a treatment hub where women are guided through personalized and coordinated multidisciplinary treatment of their cancer, including disease-specific education and holistic support activities.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120605/DC18316)

The new center – which is located on the fifth and sixth floors of the Arnold Pavilion on Swedish's First Hill campus at 1221 Madison – includes 28 exam rooms, imaging services, procedure rooms, counseling and meeting spaces as well as an educational resource center. Once fully operational, it will facilitate about 200 patient visits each day and 50,000 visits annually.

By consolidating a wide range of available cancer treatments into a single facility, the new center will greatly reduce the need for women to shuttle between various specialists to receive their cancer care. Most specialists are within the two-floor cancer center, or within an elevator ride to another floor in the same building, which houses the Swedish Cancer Institute.

Each year Swedish Cancer Institute providers facilitate more than 100,000 patient visits for treatment of nearly 100 different types of cancers. Women's cancers make up more than one third of the diseases treated at Swedish Cancer Institute. The new center will provide resources to any woman dealing with most cancers, including bladder, brain, breast, cervical, colorectal, esophageal, head and neck, leukemia, liver, lung, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, ovarian, pancreatic, renal/kidney, skin, thyroid, and uterine.

The center will provide access to a comprehensive team of skilled oncologists and other specialized physicians as well as clinical staff to deliver the highest quality of personalized and coordinated care, new treatments, educational resources and a variety of wellness options. The full team includes oncologists, surgeons, radiologists, physical therapists, social workers, as well as others who specialize in treating, educating and supporting people with cancer. All of these caregivers are committed to a comprehensive and holistic approach to cancer care that treats the whole person and addresses each woman's emotional, psychological, social and physical needs in a supportive environment.

"Our vision for the new True Family Women's Cancer Center is to help patients achieve their highest level of well-being," said Patricia Dawson, M.D., Ph.D., breast surgeon with Swedish Cancer Institute and medical director of the True Center. "Consolidating Swedish's female cancer offerings into a single location where women can receive the utmost in coordinated care will help us achieve this. It also gives women every possible advantage."

Women are different from men. Yet, at most hospitals, men and women with cancer are treated in the same place, by the same people, with the same medical approach. When you look into the science of cancer, you learn that women respond to chemotherapy drugs differently than men. Women even tend to have different survival rates for certain types of cancer.

"This type of facility has been a dream of the community for many years;" said Dr. Dawson "The True Center is a one-of-a-kind resource for women throughout the Northwest who are battling cancer. We're pleased to be able to offer this new approach for treating cancer."

Architect on the project was Perkins+Will and general contractor was Sellen Construction.

A Gift from the Community to the Community

As a non-profit organization, Swedish looked to the community to help build the $11 million facility. The families of Patricia True, Doug and Janet True, and Bill and Ruth True began the fund-raising effort with a generous $2 million gift. Since then, the remaining $9 million has been funded through gifts from the philanthropic community. Other families and organizations that stepped forward to make the True Center a reality include Eve and Chap Alvord, Robin Knepper, the Norcliffe Foundation, Bruce and Jeannie Nordstrom, Seattle Radiology, and Sellen Construction. Along with these leadership-level gifts, more than 2,500 others also lent their support to the True Center, making it a gift from the community to the community.

For More Information

For more information about the True Family Women's Cancer Center, visit http://bit.ly/LaulTr. And to watch a short video about it, visit http://bit.ly/L0AoYw.

About Swedish Cancer Institute

Since 1932, the Swedish Cancer Institute has been at the forefront of cancer treatment. It is Washington state's oldest and largest cancer treatment center. The Institute is headquartered at Swedish's First Hill campus in Seattle and employs hundreds of leading experts – including oncologists, surgeons, researchers and other specialists – who dedicate their lives to helping patients treat various types of cancers. For more information about the Swedish Cancer Institute (SCI) or new SCI initiatives, visit www.swedish.org/cancer.

About Swedish

Swedish has grown over the last 102 years to become the largest non-profit health provider in the Greater Seattle area with 11,000 employees, more than 2,800 physicians and 1,700 volunteers. It is comprised of five hospital campuses (First Hill, Cherry Hill, Ballard, Edmonds and Issaquah); ambulatory care centers in Redmond and Mill Creek; and Swedish Medical Group, a network of more than 100 primary-care and specialty clinics located throughout the Greater Puget Sound area. In addition to general medical and surgical care including robotic-assisted surgery, Swedish is known as a regional referral center, providing specialized treatment in areas such as cardiovascular care, cancer care, neuroscience, orthopedics, high-risk obstetrics, pediatric specialties, organ transplantation and clinical research. For more information, visit www.swedish.org, www.swedishcares.org, www.facebook.com/swedishmedicalcenter, or www.twitter.com/swedish.  

Swedish is affiliated with Providence Health & Services, which is a Catholic, not-for-profit organization founded by the Sisters of Providence in 1856 with 27 hospitals, 214 physician clinics and almost 53,000 employees across five states. Based in Renton, Wash., Providence Health & Services provides strategic and management services to integrated health-care systems in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington state. For more information, visit www.providence.org.

SOURCE Swedish Health Services