By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Spectrum Health’s six-story, 284,000-square-foot Lemmen-Holton Cancer Pavilion opens on June 30, and with that comes 75 new healthcare jobs for the facility.
The pavilion will serve cancer patients and their families on an outpatient basis, services that include cancer diagnoses, treatment planning and treatment. The facility connects to Butterworth Hospital, the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital and the Meijer Heart Center via a 102-foot pedestrian tunnel beneath Michigan Street; those facilities will continue to provide inpatient care in conjunction with services from the Lemmen-Holton Cancer Pavilion.
“The pavilion will have just over 200 Spectrum employees in the beginning, we created 75 new jobs and full-time equivalents,” says Lisa Shannon, VP of ambulatory services. “We’re still hiring a few, but all central staff are hired and are training. So far, we’ve hired administrative support and leadership, physics department support, systems administration for advanced technologies, and clinicians in radiology.”
From the beginning of the project, a patient and family advisory board guided the development of the cancer center to be a place of hope and healing with indoor gardens, an outdoor chemotherapy area, a multi-story waterfall, natural light and materials, a sitting area with fireplace, framed nature photographs, and patients wear robes instead of hospital gowns.
“The building was designed to create hope and healing,” Shannon says. “And families of patients have ample options with a café, a specialty gift shop and a family resource center where they can get books, pamphlets, and talk with resource specialists about cancer and its treatments.”
Source: Lisa Shannon, Spectrum Health
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Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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