The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
STATE-OF-THE-ART TREATMENT
University Hospitals Geauga Medical Center opens Seidman Cancer Center to patients
“One of the goals of creating the new facility was to make it a restful, calming and beautiful environment for patients..” — University Hospitals media relations representative Lynn Novelli
As medical director of Geauga County’s only comprehensive cancer-care facility, Dr. Judah Friedman is one proud physician.
Not 10 months after its ground-breaking ceremony, the UH Seidman Cancer Center is up and running, offering an array cancer-treatment services that, for years, weren’t available outside of University Circle in Cleveland, where the main campus of UH Seidman Cancer Center is located.
“It’s just wonderful that we’ve moved into this new space,” Friedman said in an Aug. 2 interview at the new facility, located at 13207 Ravenna Road in Claridon Township. “It’s a privilege to take care of people at such an emotional time in their lives. And we’re thrilled to be able to do it in this beautiful, calming new facility. We treat
our patients and their families as if they were part of our own families. This place really gives us an environment in which to do that in a much happier, healthier way.”
University Hospitals media relations representative Lynn Novelli in an Aug. 3 e-mail exchange echoed Friedman’s sentiments.
“One of the goals of creating the new facility was to make it a restful, calming and beautiful environment for patients who are on this very difficult journey with their disease,” she typed.
Some of the facilities and features at UH Geauga Seidman Cancer Center include:
• 10 physician exam rooms
• 18 infusion (chemotherapy) bays
• Large, comfortable, private, semi-private infusion rooms
• One communal infusion room
• Open, spacious, contemporary design with many large windows overlooking the scenic, wooded property
• Healing Garden for family, friends and patients
• Natural stone accent wall
A University Hospitals media release on the center’s opening confirms the first patients to be treated in the 11,500-square-foot, $5.6 million facility arrived on July 24. Since then, hundreds more have passed through its doors, Friedman confirmed.
“Each physician here sees an average of 15 patients each day,” he said. “And, on the infusion side of things, 20 to 30 folks will come through in a day.”
He said that, when he came to UH Geauga Medical Center in 2007, the cancer-care facilities there — and east of Cleveland, in general — were slim.
“There were very few cancer-care services then for folks in Geauga, Portage and Ashtabula counties, among others, outside of the main UH Seidman Cancer Center campus on University Circle,” he said. “We were just a little office here, having to send people downtown for their cancer treatment. And that can be a burden, between the time and the gas it takes to drive all the way out there. Plus, these people and their families were dealing with a cancer diagnosis, already, so having to drive to Cleveland so often could really be quite a burden.”
And he’s not kidding. Friedman said patients receiving radiation treatment go for it every day for up to six weeks. And Infusion, or chemotherapy, treatments can be weekly for up to six months, he said. Plus, those infusion treatments may last up to four hours each.
In 2008, UH Geauga Medical Center began offering infusion treatments “and we only had two or three small rooms for that type of care,” Friedman said. “And we only had one to two nurses trained to administer chemotherapy. It soon became apparent that we needed more nurses and more rooms to accommodate these patients.”
He said between 2007 and 2017, the hospital had to expand its cancertreatment facilities three times.
“That just represents the need,” he said.
Emilie Gottsegen, who is the UH development officer, said that, between 2010 and 2016, there was a 400 percent increase in oncology patients at UH Geauga Medical Center.
“So, one of our challenges in our old space was the fact that there were no windows and that it was such a small space,” Friedman said. “There was not a lot of room for the nurses to work and it wasn’t the most comfortable space for the patients who, keep in mind, were undergoing as long as four hours of sitting there with an IV in and getting an infusion, without windows in the room and no space for their families to be with them.”
So, in working with Chagrin Falls-based Smith Architects Healthcare Design LLC, Friedman said the UH Geauga crew made sure to provide a wish list including comparable design elements incorporated in the hospital system’s main Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland and other cutting-edge cancer-treatment facilities around the country.
“That was very important to us, to create a large space to make patients comfortable, and to create an atmosphere that’s healing,” Friedman said, adding that everyone from the physicians and nurses to technicians and the community were in on the facility’s concept and design phases.
“We wanted big windows to allow for views of the beautiful, rolling hills of Geauga County,” he said. “There’s also a healing garden where people can walk around. Plus, it’s also wheelchair accessible, so patients, their families and loved ones can enjoy of the outdoor beauty around the campus.”
The bottom line, however, is that the UH Geauga Seidman Cancer Center offers the three “pillars” of cancer treatment, as described by Friedman, all in one place that are, for the first time, all close to home for so many more patients: surgery, infusion therapy and radiation.
Both Friedman and Gottsegen also pointed out the fact that the new UH Geauga Seidman Cancer Center, being affiliated with the main Seidman campus downtown, offer not only the utmost in comprehensive cancer care via its variety of services, it’s also a model of multi-disciplinary care in that it infuses its in-house expertise with specialists across the entire UH spectrum.
“It’s not just one doctor, per se,” Friedman said. “We always have one doctor who’s kind of your coach. But we pull input from radiologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons and all manner of specialists here. I can present all of the information about a specific case to the main campus, right here, on a laptop, through video teleconferencing and have discussions about the most effective treatment for any given patient, instead of having (the patient) have to travel from A to B to C to D to get the same answers.”
All of this cutting-edge care and convenience was, in no small measure, made possible by the community it serves. In fact, Gottsegen said 725 community-based donors helped foot the bill for the new facility.
“There are 21 donor plaques on the wall out in that hallway,” Gottsegen said, gesturing to the corridor outside the new center’s family consultation room. “Those go to donors of $25,000 or more. Formerly, we had three throughout the whole facility. You just don’t get that kind of support without meeting the community’s needs.”
A formal ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for the Seidman Cancer Center Aug. 15.