In May, Woman’s Hospital made good on a longtime goal of expanding its cancer treatment services with the opening of the new Breast and GYN Cancer Pavilion, a $19 million facility that offers comprehensive diagnostic, treatment and integrated health services for breast and gynecological, or GYN, cancers.
As Woman’s President and CEO Teri Fontenot tells Business Report in a new feature, the facility’s one-stop shop treatment model, and its focus on both breast and GYN cancers, makes it the only of its kind in the Gulf South and one of few in the nation.
It promises to further position Woman’s—already a health care destination because of its neonatal intensive care unit and other services—as a regional cancer treatment hub for women suffering from breast and GYN cancers throughout Louisiana and parts of the Gulf South.
“We’ve always provided care for women with cancer,” Fontenot says, “but it wasn’t real visible, it was departmentalized.”
Historically, Woman’s has performed 45,000 breast procedures a year and is one of the largest breast centers in the country, offering broad diagnostic services and surgery, says Fontenot.
“The goal [of the new pavilion] is to put the patient in the center of the planning table,” says Fontenot. “We want all the services to come to the patient.”
Located within the hospital’s main building, the Cancer Pavilion is a partnership between Woman’s and Mary Bird Perkins-Our Lady of the Lake Cancer Center.
“We took a strategic look at everything from diagnosis to detection and survivorship, and we looked at the expertise and strengths of each partner,” says Fontenot.
Previously, Woman’s did not offer radiation therapy—a major component of cancer treatment—to patients. The new pavilion features the two main types of radiation therapies, a linear accelerator—which shoots precise beams of radiation at cancer cells—and brachytherapy, the process of surgically implanting radioactive material directly into affected tissue. Brachytherapy is effective in vaginal and cervical cancers.
Read the full story. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
