It’s brought a spacious new dimension to southern Alberta’s world of oncology
A week after its official opening, Dr. Don Morris was still between his offices in the city’s old cancer centre and its sparkling successor.
“I’m still running an office in the Tom Baker and I’m in my new office in the Arthur Child,” said Morris, the medical director of the Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre.
That duality is symbolic, he said, of the ongoing juggling act involved when moving as seamlessly as possible between two large medical facilities crucial to the welfare of thousands of cancer patients.
“We still have to maintain 100 per cent of our capacity at the Tom Baker (until the transition is complete),” said Morris, who’s been transitioning between various hubs of cancer treatment in Calgary since 1997.
But those times of shuttling between facilities in Calgary — and sometimes outside of it — to obtain care during what’s often a patient’s most traumatic life ordeal is coming to an end.
On Monday, the first patients will be welcomed through the doors of the 186,000-square-metre, $1.4-billion facility girdled in swooping curves of glass and steel — a space that promises to consolidate all of the city’s cancer care within its 12 floors of research and treatment space.
It’s brought a spacious new dimension to southern Alberta’s world of oncology — its 9,200 square metres of research area alone is larger than that offered by the Tom Baker Cancer Centre and old Holy Cross Hospital combined, said Morris.
Its entire footprint is seven times that of the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, whose patient demand outstripped its space within three to four years of its opening in 1981.
“The size of the Arthur Child obviously relieves the space crunch,” said Morris.
New cancer centre to boast more equipment, most new
With an eye to caring for an aging and rapidly growing population, the new centre will boast 90 chemotherapy chairs — almost triple the number previously deployed.
It will also boast 12 radiation vaults, with the shelled-in space to add three more.
Another huge leap is the number of in-patient beds — 160 — more than twice the 75 previously available, he said.
In fact, said Morris, the Tom Baker didn’t even have its own in-patient beds — a feature farmed out to other facilities.
“In-patient beds were leased out to the Foothills hospital — we occupied their units, so they’re essentially moving over to the Arthur Child,” he said.
“You can imagine the gulf between (those numbers) and what bridging it means to patient care.”
Also being moved to the new centre — this time from Tom Baker on the opposite side of the Foothills Medical Centre — are two radiation treatment linear accelerators that are still relatively new, a move that should save significant dollars, said Morris.
“Most of the equipment is new,” he said.
That includes two MRI-guided accelerators, making the Arthur Child the first facility in Canada to operate a pair of them, said Morris.
“It allows patients coming in on a daily basis to customize their (radiation) dose to where it goes to shrink the tumour, so there’s less normal tissues receiving radiation,” he said.
Another technology tailoring treatment to need that will be available at the centre is molecular gene sequencing, said Morris.
“It’ll allow molecular changes to be identified to receive special treatment — getting the right patient at the right time to receive the right treatment,” he said.
Hopes to reduce wait times
One line of research at the Arthur Child will be integrated with the facility’s own patients, with an eye to both furthering science while simultaneously benefiting those battling cancer and reducing the duration of clinical trials, said Morris.
“Harvesting immune cells from the patient and educating it to fight the cancer, then reintroducing it into the patient is harnessing the patient’s immune system,” said the physician.
Previously, it’s a process that could take months when conducted in health-care facilities in other cities, he said, “but we can do it much faster in-house.”
And starting in January, an assessment process for those with symptoms will be activated, either directing patients to one of its beds or away from emergency departments.
It’s an approach that AHS is hoping will help reduce the wait times for patients to see an oncologist.
Last June, a report presented to the AHS board by Dr. Dean Ruether, senior medical director for Cancer Alberta, stated wait times for treatment have surged over the past seven years while the number of new cancer patients has also increased.
New oncology referrals have climbed 18 per cent in seven years, mirroring growth in the “unique patient” category from more than 58,000 to almost 64,000.
However, the number of patients getting their first oncology consult outside the recommended window has escalated by 68 per cent, with the average rising to nine weeks from six weeks, a figure that took a startling jump in the months between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024.
Earlier this month, the number of weeks from referral to a first consult for radiological oncology almost doubled from a year ago, to 11 weeks from 6.7 weeks, while the time to see a medical oncologist is nine weeks.
Some of those figures result from the progress made in fighting cancer, which has turned many instances of it from fatal to chronic, said Morris.
“We’re victims of our own success — people are living longer and better, but the cost to the system is still there, requiring multiple lines of treatment,” he said.
“It’s where most of the workload is coming from.”
‘So much more warm and welcoming’
But even amid the challenge of ballooning patient numbers, softening the rough edges of the cancer experience was a major priority in designing the Arthur Child — and patient advisers played a key role in that.
Colourfully soothing, distracting tiles imparting the impression of greenery have been fitted to ceilings above radiation therapy bays, and natural light cascades through many of the building’s spaces.
Those are some of the features Charlotte Kessler says she’s proud of having brainstormed since she joined the Patient-Family Advisory Council a decade ago.
“At the Tom Baker, radiation therapy (space) feels like a basement, you’re surrounded by clinical stuff and by clutter and it’s not very comforting,” said Kessler, 43, who was diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer in 2013.
Living rock walls are part of the decor in waiting spaces that are expansive compared to those at the Tom Baker, which she described as “good-sized walk-in closets.”
A sacred space for spiritual meditation was designed to be inter-denominational and multicultural, with labyrinthine floor markings that come with a covering for Indigenous patients and family members who might find it uncomfortable, said Kessler.
A comforting, even celebratory sanctum of the Arthur Child is its huge courtyard formed by the building’s seeming embrace.
“We call it the heart around the embrace, like someone hugging the central courtyard — it’s the staff putting their hearts and souls around patients,” said the Medicine Hat resident.
Within are supportive spaces or those providing patients with some solitary time — and a gong for marking milestones.
Kessler also points to in-patient rooms complete with comforts such as pullout futons for caregivers and lockers, along with its own gym.
“We know that if you have a gym and you can move, you’ll recover better,” she said.
It’s a feature she said her husband, Ryan, particularly appreciates, since he was diagnosed last year with multiple myeloma.
His first physician appointment at the Arthur Child, she said, is Nov. 13, while the family hopes to benefit from the patient-integrated research at the new centre, said Kessler, adding she’s staying on as a patient adviser.
“Just because we’re moving in doesn’t mean the work is done,” she said, adding seeing results of families’ input has been overwhelming.
“Feeling they really heard and took to heart everything we were wishing for is beyond words . . . the centre will be so much more warm and welcoming; hopefully, the staff will also be renewed.”
Staffing gaps still to be filled
Critics of the province’s approach to health care say that while the Arthur Child is a welcome, sorely needed addition to cancer care, staffing levels and budgets haven’t kept pace with the bricks and mortar.
“It’s definitely a positive to have the new centre in Calgary, but it is just a building without the skilled health-care workers to staff it,” said Dr. Paul Parks, immediate past-president of the Alberta Medical Association.
“We really are no longer competitive with other provinces to recruit for a specialty (oncology) in very high demand across Canada,” he said. Some rank and file health-care workers say the centre’s being opened with fewer so-called allied health workers — therapists, social and spiritual workers, and psychologists — than are needed.
Those who oversee cancer care admit there are staffing gaps to be filled, including at the Arthur Child.
“There are very few areas (of medicine) that haven’t been touched by a lack of skilled practitioners, and you’re also limited somewhat by budget,” said Morris.
“But we’d be in a much worse place without this building — it’s been very positive for recruitment.”
At least as positive is the morale boost the new centre has brought to patients, their families and medical staff, whose excitement, he said, has been tangible.
“Patients and families can’t wait to get into the new building,” said Morris.
“It’s once in a lifetime when you open a building like this.”