Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida is set to open its stunning, new outpatient building on the Baptist Hospital campus later this year. The $430 million facility combines the academic and clinical arenas in a community hospital setting, giving South Floridians access to the highest quality, most advanced cancer care without leaving home. The Institute will also serve as a destination cancer center for international patients from Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Institute is the culmination of more than a decade of planning by Baptist Health. “We’ve watched people leave our community for cancer services at faraway, specialized centers,” said Brian E. Keeley, Baptist Health’s president and CEO. “A cancer diagnosis touches an entire family. Why should a patient, at such an emotional and critical time, have to leave their support system? We knew there had to be a better way.”
When it came to building a new medical facility whose mission would be to fight cancer and provide patients with support from diagnosis to treatment and survivorship, Baptist Health turned to the experts — cancer patients themselves — to help create the most effective healing environment possible.
The facility will feature indoor/outdoor areas for eating, meditation and chemotherapy treatment. Natural light will stream into a bright and welcoming environment, with carefully selected, calming colors on the walls. A multilevel jellyfish tank will greet visitors as they enter the main floor lobby. To address patients’ quality of life, as well as overall health and well-being, the Institute will offer a specialty pharmacy, patient boutique and a resource center for education and research. Cooking classes, yoga, acupuncture and an array of mind-body therapies will be offered as part of cancer support services. In 2018, the new Hilton Miami/Dadeland is scheduled to open on campus, providing convenient access to the facility.
The Institute has recruited top national and international cancer professionals — from surgeons and researchers to psychologists and nurses — and has acquired the most sophisticated technology for diagnosis and treatment. In February 2016, the Institute announced plans to join the New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Alliance to expand patients’ access to clinical trials and cancer research.
“Baptist Health is making an enormous investment so that we can offer comprehensive, destination cancer care to patients and families,” said Michael J. Zinner, M.D., founding CEO and executive medical director of Miami Cancer Institute.
A renowned cancer researcher and surgeon, Dr. Zinner is an expert in pancreatic- hepatobiliary diseases. He returns to his hometown of Miami from the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center in Boston where he was clinical director and surgeon-in-chief at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, co-founder of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and founder of Harvard’s Center for Surgery & Public Health.
The Institute will feature the first proton therapy center in South Florida, bringing to the region a sophisticated treatment that targets cancer cells with precise doses of radiation while avoiding healthy tissue. The 140,000 square-foot research building in which the proton unit will be housed sits adjacent to the 305,000 square-foot clinical center. The space is dedicated to bringing promising lab discoveries and potential treatment breakthroughs to patients and its center for genomic medicine will harness advances in personalized medicine to offer targeted treatments. A planned bone marrow transplant program would be housed within Baptist Hospital’s inpatient facility.
Clinical resources and technological investments aside, the vision for Miami Cancer Institute remains sharply focused on delivering the human touch to all patients. “Cancer is a very personal experience,” says Dr. Zinner. “We want this to be the best patient experience anywhere.”
