Cancer center funding approved

Ellis Fischel Cancer Center will use the funds to build a new facility.

By Elliot Njus

Published Feb. 26, 2008

As acting governor while Gov. Matt Blunt was out of the state, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder gave final approval for $31 million in funding for Ellis Fischel Cancer Center.

At events held at University Hospital and UM-Kansas City, which will receive $15 million for a pharmacy and nursing building, Kinder ceremoniously signed the bill that would appropriate the funding from the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative fund. The fund was created from the sale of assets from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, the state's student lending agency.

"These funds will bring about a new, comprehensive cancer center in a state of the art facility," Kinder said.

He thanked the Missouri legislature for bypassing politics and partisanship in approving the funding. Kinder was joined at the ceremony at University Hospital by Rep. Ed Robb, R-Columbia, and Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia. Both legislators' districts include MU.

"My investment in this project is very, very personal," Robb said. "My wife is a cancer survivor, thanks to all the people in this audience here."

Robb also said he would promote additional MU Health Care master plan projects in the legislature, including a new orthopedic institute and the planned Health Science Research and Education Center.

Ellis Fischel Medical Director Bill Caldwell said the new facility would improve patient care and the hospital's recruiting efforts.

"Recruiting new faculty and staff into a brand-new cancer center will be a lot easier than in a 70-year-old cancer center," he said.

Caldwell said physicians and caregivers often had to travel back and forth between the outpatient care clinics available at the old cancer center location on West Business Loop 70 and the inpatient clinics at University Hospital.

He said the old building is developing leaks and cracks in the brick and mortar of the structure.

"It's not as if it's an acutely deteriorating and crumbling building," Caldwell said.

But, he said, the building can't house some equipment for new techniques the center is using to fight cancer.

UM system President Gary Forsee thanked the legislature for approving the bill quickly. He praised Blunt for developing the Lewis and Clark Initiative, calling it "significant and bold."