Cancer Center to receive $31 million

By Elliot Njus

Published Feb. 29, 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 MU’s Ellis Fischel Cancer Center this past Tuesday.

At events held at University Hospital and UM-Kansas City, which will receive $15 million for a pharmacy and nursing building, Kinder ceremonially 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.

According to the master plan, the new facility will cost about $52 million to construct. It will include many cancer treatment facilities, but also areas for quiet meditation and resources for cancer survivors and family of cancer patients. The facility will be about 100,000 square feet.

Kinder 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. Robb’s district includes the center’s current location.

“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 the building can’t house some equipment for new techniques the center uses to fight cancer, he said.

Caldwell said he hoped the new facility could be a comprehensive cancer center. According to the National Cancer Institute Web site, a comprehensive cancer center must conduct laboratory, clinical and population research and professional and public training in its community.

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.”

Construction of the UMKC pharmacy and nursing building began in 2005, but large spaces inside the building were left open until funding could be secured from the state.

The building will house classroom space, clinical simulation laboratory space and an animal research center, according to Kinder’s news release.