Cancer Center

Project Overview

In September 2017, NexCore Group began planning a fast track development for a new, on-campus cancer treatment center for CHI Health St. Francis (CHSF) in Grand Island, Nebraska. The existing award-winning CHSF Cancer Center, located off-campus, required additional space and modernization to remain competitive with a new hospital entering the market. NexCore proposed a new, state-of-the-art regional cancer treatment center on the centrally located hospital campus. The new facility provides an unparalleled competitive advantage with an optimal configuration of space to serve patients and improve staff efficiencies by fully integrating in-patient and surgical cancer onto one site.

The new CHI Health Regional Cancer Center is located adjacent to the CHSF Hospital with maximum visibility and access to the community.  A distinct entry makes the facility easily locatable, and its proximity to the hospital allows providers and inpatients to conveniently move between the two buildings. 

The space program included an expansion to fully support the robust service, which was overcrowded in its previous location. The space layout incorporates a front stage/back stage concept, allowing providers and care teams a highly efficient platform to deliver care. Additionally, it configures medical oncology, radiation oncology and clinical services adjacent to the patient entry and front-end spaces to significantly improve convenience and wayfinding for patients. The medical oncology space includes beautiful views of the landscaped garden area to further improve the patient experience.
 

Project Scope

The project scope included site selection, hospital campus master planning, detailed room by room programming, design and construction. NexCore partnered with a top-ranked healthcare design firm with multiple awards for excellence in regional cancer treatment center facilities to create the new CHI Health Regional Cancer Center.  

NexCore assisted CHSF in developing a new campus master plan. The current campus is fully-developed, with only a few locations left on-campus for future building expansions. Several long-term needs for expansion exist, including replacing the surgery center, expanding the imaging center, adding a future medical office building and reconfiguring the emergency department. NexCore’s in-house design experts explored elements of the current campus program and discovered multiple underutilized programs that could be consolidated and relocated from older single-story structures. These structures located on the front of the campus will be demolished to afford space for the new facility and future expansions.  

NexCore leveraged its experience and the benefits of collaborating with the nation’s best healthcare designers to create the building design concept. The new building incorporates innovations and best practices to meet the needs of the physicians and their patients. The space program includes two linear accelerators, high density radiation therapies, 20 clinical exam rooms, 30 infusion stations, image recovery services, support group spaces and a clinical trials program. The design solution resulted in a 40,056 SF single floor plate with a central entrance that has direct access to key services. The building also has linkages to the existing hospital to allow patient and physician connectivity.