Moffitt Cancer Center will open a $400 million inpatient surgical hospital on July 31 in Tampa.
Construction began on the Moffitt McKinley Hospital in July 2020 in anticipation of an increase in the number of patients and cancer surgeries over the next 10 years.
Physicians at the new hospital will treat all types of cancer, but focus on solid tumors requiring surgery said President and CEO of Moffitt Dr. Patrick Hwu.
The 10-story facility also has an MRI machine that will give doctors a real-time look at patients on the operating table. It's something Hwu said almost no one else has.
"If a brain surgeon wants to know if he got all the tumor, we don't have to close the patient, send them to a scanner," he said. "Everyone clears the room and an MRI comes in from [another] room on a track and comes over and looks to see if we got the whole tumor. If not, the surgeon will take more of a margin."
Surgeons will have access to in 19 operating rooms. At a ribbon cutting on Thursday, Moffitt board member Jenny Moffitt said the design of the building was really patient-focused.
"They were very thoughtful about the rooms themselves and where someone might need a cubby within the room or things that that patients and family members could do themselves without having to ask for assistance," she said. "Whether it was retrieving their own ice chips from the lounge upstairs or being able to have full control over the lighting in the room, the blinds, and the temperature."
The nearly 500,000-square-foot facility has 128 rooms with the capacity to expand in the future.
A time-lapse video shows the progress of the build.
Patients will have 350-square-foot rooms with virtual whiteboards and flat screen TVs, foldout sofas and recliners for families and visitors, and technology that identifies each team member that enters the room.
A three-story parking garage and a pedestrian bridge connects the hospital to the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation Outpatient Center across McKinley Drive.
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