Construction started on Allegheny Health Network's $35M cancer center in Monroeville
Monroeville Cancer Center
Allegheny Health Network and Forbes Hospital unveils plans for a million regional cancer center to be built in 2018.
Allegheny Health Network's $35 million cancer care center is under construction in Monroeville and is expected to be ready for patients by early next year.
Details about the AHN Cancer Institute — Forbes were unveiled during a presentation last week attended by hospital executives, doctors, medical staff and public officials at the Forbes Learning Center. The project is one component of a $225 million plan to expand access to state-of-the art cancer care in Western Pennsylvania by Highmark Health and AHN, officials said.
“We're taking care to an entirely new level in 2019,” said Dr. Mark Rubino, president of Forbes Hospital.
The 63,000-square-foot facility, which is being built on what is now a parking lot serving the hospital, will be two floors, with radiation treatment on the lower level and chemotherapy on the second floor. The property will include a “healing garden” that can be viewed from its second floor.
The facility will consolidate services now spread throughout Forbes and at the Intercommunity Cancer Center it will replace.
The idea, said Cynthia Hundorfean — AHN's president and CEO — is to get cancer care under one roof.
“We want to make cancer care as good as it can be. It's going to be a good experience for patients,” she said.
Dr. Steve Anolik, the director of the Intercommunity Cancer Center at Forbes, helped design the facility that is being built.
“It will be nice to be in the same building,” he said. “There's a huge amount of pluses.”
Among the benefits is improved collaboration between physicians and speedier treatment for patients, he said.
Construction at the center started in January after site plans were approved by the Monroeville council.
“We couldn't be happier to have Forbes here,” Mayor Nick Gresock said.
The cancer center is part of AHN's plan to build up to 10 community cancer centers across the region as part of an expanding partnership with Johns Hopkins Medicine, a health care system based in Baltimore.
Highmark Health, AHN's parent company, has said it plans to invest $200 million to build cancer centers over the next two years. The Monroeville center will serve as a satellite campus to the hub planned at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh's North Shore.
AHN spokeswoman Stephanie Waite has said the network also plans to build satellite campuses in Beaver and Butler counties.
Dr. David Parda, chairman of the AHN Cancer Institute in Pittsburgh, said centers like these are needed at a time when about 1.7 million new cancer cases are expected this year.
“And 81,000 of those will be in Pennsylvania alone,” Parda said, citing American Cancer Society statistics.
Dillon Carr is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-871-2325, dcarr@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dillonswriting.
