After seven years of construction and painstaking clinical preparations, Calgary’s new cancer centre has become a reality.
While the $1.4 billion Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre was being celebrated after more than a decade in the making, concerns over oncology staff levels and treatment wait times tempered the joy in christening the 186,000 sq.-metre facility.
But at a grand opening event in the centre on the northeast corner of the Foothills Medical Centre, Premier Danielle Smith said staffing levels issues are easing and called the moment “truly an historic day in our province…the province is now positioned to be an international leader in cancer treatment and research.”
She noted cancer patients and survivors had a key role in advising how the centre was crafted.
“It puts the patient at the centre of a multidisciplinary health care system,” said Smith.
Construction of the facility began in 2017 under the previous NDP government. None of the now- official opposition party’s members were invited to speak at Thursday’s event nor was that government’s contributions mentioned.
“That’s just how things are in Alberta right now,” said NDP health critic Dr. Luanne Metz, who said she was invited as an audience member.
The centre’s genesis dates back to Alberta’s Progressive Conservative government a decade ago.
Over the past year, the imposing glass and steel building in the northeast corner of the Foothills Medical Centre has been fitted with medical equipment.
It’s expected to be the largest hospital of its kind in Canada and the second-largest in North America and is seven times the size of the old Tom Baker Cancer Centre.
Patient demand outstripped the Tom Baker within three to four years of its opening, while many patient services have been scattered throughout the city.
Not only will the new centre consolidate those activities, it will be a hub of medical information and research like few others in North America, say medical officials.
Along with 160 beds and 90 chemotherapy chambers, the facility will boast 9,200 sq. metres of research space.
“The work that goes on in this facility will save lives,” said Alberta Health Minister Adriana LaGrange.
One of those patient advisors whose input shaped the centre said she was thrilled by its opening of facility that will begin accepting patients near the end of the month.
“It’s the culmination of years of hoping and dreaming and advocating,” said Medicine Hat resident Kessler, who’s living with a chronic form of brain cancer.
“The new clinical research and trials, we’d have to go to Ontario but now it’s all happening right here.”
She said the arrival of the Arthur J.E. Child is particularly timely for her family after her husband was also diagnosed with cancer last year.
The cancer centre’s opening comes as concerns have mounted over the state of care for cancer patients, with a report presented to the AHS board last June by Dr. Dean Ruether, senior medical director for Cancer Alberta stating 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 to the first quarter of 2024.
The number of weeks from referral to first consult for radiological oncology has almost doubled, to 11 weeks from 6.7 weeks, while the time to see a medical oncologist is nine weeks.
On Thursday, Ruether said progress has been made in recruiting oncologists since the spring but that “we’re not out of the woods yet.”
He said the need for more physicians is being felt at the new cancer centre even though staffing trends are headed in the right direction.
“What we need now are people to work and we don’t have a full complement of people (for the Arthur J.E. Child Centre) but things will get better,” said Ruether.
The situation in the oncology field in Alberta isn’t improving, said Dr. Paul Parks, the immediate past president of the Alberta Medical Association.
The late British-born businessman Arthur Child rose to be a titan in Canada’s meat industry, ultimately assuming the role of CEO of Burns Foods.
The Tom Baker Cancer Centre is being re-purposed for medical use including hosting a radiopharmaceutical centre, said AHS officials.
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