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Moffitt Cancer Center To Open $400 Million Inpatient Surgical Hospital

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Moffitt Cancer Center, one of 54 National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers, is opening the doors to its $400 million inpatient surgical hospital in Tampa, Moffitt McKinley, which it expects will accommodate a 63% increase in patient volume and a 33% rise in cancer surgeries over the next 10 years.

Construction began in 2020 with design plans entailing a hospital that could treat all types of cancer and provide surgery for solid tumors. The design was based on feedback from more than 170 stakeholders, including physicians, nurses, lab personnel, pharmacy staff, hospital leaders, administrators, patients, and families.

The 10-story facility is 498,000 square feet and is made up of 19 operating suites, 128 inpatient rooms, and 72 perioperative rooms. It also has an intraoperative MR suite, a diagnostic CT scanner, and two nuclear medicine cameras. The hospital will start with 80 available inpatient beds but can expand to 400 in the future.

“We are significantly increasing our capacity to help more patients and save so many lives here. We’re expanding all over so we can bring therapies closer to our patients and perform life-saving research that will give them even better hope for tomorrow,” said Moffitt president and CEO Dr. Patrick Hwu in a statement.

The new MR scanner provides doctors with real-time views of the patient on the operating table and does not require the patient to be moved to another room for scanning, according to WUSF Public Media.

“Everyone clears the room and an MR scanner comes in from [another] room on a track and comes over and looks to see if we got the whole tumor. If not, the surgeon will take more of a margin,” said Hwu.

Each patient room is 350 square feet and includes virtual whiteboards and flat-screen TVs, foldout sofas and recliners, and technology that identifies each team member that enters. The hospital also has a 26,000-square-foot central utility plant, a three-story parking garage, and a pedestrian bridge that connects it to the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Outpatient Center.

In addition to this project, Moffitt Cancer Center broke ground back in January on the construction of its 775-acre Pasco County campus, Speros Florida, which will include 140 buildings for clinics, research, housing, and more. It is expected to start seeing patients in 2025.

For Moffitt McKinley, it partnered with Barr & Barr Inc., Hammes Company, HDR, Horus Construction Services Inc., Walter P. Moore, and Ardurra Group Inc.

The hospital held a ribbon-cutting event on June 21. Its first surgical case is scheduled for July 31. 

 

Source: HealthCareBusiness News

Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford Plans $60M Medical Office Building In Middle Tennessee

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A multimillion dollar health care facility is coming to Rutherford County.

Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford will begin construction on a $60 million multispecialty medical office building on the hospital’s campus in 2023, according to a news release. A portion of the 102,000-square-foot building will house The Ascension Saint Thomas Cancer Center, a new cancer partnership with Tennessee Oncology.

Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford is Middle Tennessee’s seventh-largest hospital, according to Nashville Business Journal research, with 286 beds and more than 1,000 employees. The announcement comes in the midst of a $110 million campus investment into the main Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford hospital, which is set for completion in 2024 and includes the construction of a parking garage.

The Ascension Saint Thomas Cancer Center will feature surgical, medical and radiation cancer care specialists who will focus on cancer provention, detection and treatment, according to the release. Tennessee Oncology is one of the largest oncology practices in the U.S., according to the release, with 30 centers across 30 states.

“Cancer impacts more than 1.7 million Americans annually. We want to reimagine cancer prevention and care to make screenings and treatment more convenient for the many individuals right here in Murfreesboro and Rutherford County who have been or will be affected,” Gordon Ferguson, president and CEO of Ascension Saint Thomas Rutherford, said in the release. “We are honored to partner with the innovators at Tennessee Oncology in a shared goal of fighting cancer in our community.”

 

Source: Nashville Business Journal

Geographic Trends Emerge For Private Equity Firms Acquiring Physician Offices

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The Northeast, Florida and Arizona are the nation’s hotspots for private equity (PE) firms to acquire physician practices across six specialties.

A new study examined geographic trends of private equity acquisitions of physician offices specializing in dermatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, obstetrics/gynecology (OB/GYN), orthopedics, and urology. Among those, less than 10% of physicians worked in PE-acquired practices, as of 2019, based on figures from the IQVIA OneKey database, compiled with the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile and other data.

Health care industry analysts have been examining effects, good and bad, of PE investments in physician practices. The study did not attach financial values to PE transactions and did not examine consequences for patient care, but it did refer to potential price hikes if market competition dries up.

“Because some PE acquisitions consolidate physician practices into larger organizations, geographic concentration of PE penetration may be associated with reduced physician competition, which could lead to increased prices,” the study said. “If PE acquisitions induce practice consolidation among remaining independent practices with financial pressures, this spillover effect may further hinder competition, underscoring the importance of monitoring practice consolidation and the ownership and regulatory environment of acquisitions.”

The research letter, “Geographic Variation in Private Equity Penetration Across Select Office-Based Physician Specialties in the U.S.,” was published earlier this year in JAMA Health Forum.

How Many And Where

The study found in 2019, there were 97,094 physicians in the six specialties and 4,738, or 4.9%, worked in PE-acquired practices, the study said. PE penetration was:

• 7.5% for dermatology, or 851 of 11,324 physicians
• 7.4% for gastroenterology, or 845 of 11,484 physicians
• 6.5% for urology, or 492 of 7,609 physicians
• 5.1% for ophthalmology, or 741 of 14,493 physicians
• 4.7% for OB/GYN, or 1,325 of 28,493 physicians
• 1.9% for orthopedics, or 460 of 23,891 physicians

Based on state and hospital referral region data, PE penetration was greatest in the Northeast at 6.8%, or 1,270 of 18,708 physicians, and lowest in the Midwest at 3.8%, or 638 of 16,613 physicians. PE penetration was highest in:

• Washington D.C., 18.2 %, or 188 of 1,031 physicians
• Arizona, 17.5%, or 326 of 1,866 physicians
• New Jersey, 13.6%, or 464 of 3,49 physicians
• Maryland, 13.1%, or 195 of 1,488 physicians
• Connecticut, 12.6%, or 212 of 1,688 physicians
• Florida, 10.8%, or 741 of 6,852 physicians

 

Source: Medical Economics