Safe at Home
Landmark preparing to bring cancer center back to Woonsocket, RI
Woonsocket – Landmark Medical Center’s cancer care operation is set to return to Woonsocket from North Smithfield in a newly renovated space across from the main hospital opening in January.
“It was the perfect time to bring it home to Woonsocket,” Landmark CEO, Mike Souza, said of the Cancer Center.
The Cancer Center has been in North Smithfield since 2016 when it expanded out of the main hospital facility. Souza noted that the North Smithfield lease is expiring soon, and many of the patients are Woonsocket residents who live closer to the new location.
“They’re from the local area. They don’t have to travel to Providence or Boston,” he said. “When you’re as sick as some of these patients are, traveling in the car for 15, 30 minutes, an hour is not something you want to do.”
The entire North Smithfield staff, including Chemotherapy Director. Dr. Ahmed Nadeem, and Oncology Director, Lisa Cahee Stevens, will transfer to the new 10,000 square-foot site when it opens in late January. Cahee Stevens said “the new space sets the department up well to grow its staff, potentially bringing in a third provider.”
Souza said the Cass Avenue location is designed to be “one-stop shopping” for cancer patients. It will feature six exam rooms, a dozen treatment bays, a blood lab and a Landmark-operated pharmacy where patients can get both their oncology drugs and any other outpatient prescriptions they may need.
Nadeem said “the blood lab and the pharmacy are especially critical to making treatment more convenient for cancer patients, as is the proximity to the main hospital facility.”
“Cancer centers should be close to the hospital,” he said. “Emergencies can happen at any time.”
Moving the Cancer Center closer also makes life more convenient for the medical students conducting residencies at Landmark. The hospital announced an academic affiliation with New York Medical College in 2021, which Nadeem said was a big highlight for Landmark, and hematology and oncology as they are core parts of the residency program.
Darren-Erik Diaz, one of the Architects from the healthcare-centered architecture firm, JPT, that worked on the center, said the challenge in designing the Cancer Center was taking the pre-established Landmark style and replicating it with improvements in the new space.
“We did a lot of variations and a lot of listening,” he said. “We started understanding there were limitations in the space.”
Diaz pointed out that his team made the decision to sacrifice some square-footage to add a “clerestory,” basically a raised roof with windows, above the treatment bays so there was as much – if not more – natural light as in the North Smithfield location. He also said his team added several windows to the back walls of the building, which had almost none because of the building’s previous life as a supermarket.
Landmark and JPT are both hoping to complete the construction by the end of January, Diaz said, but the exact date the new center can open for operation will depend on inspections and certifications from the state.
The Blackstone Valley of Rhode Island and Massachusetts-based newspaper, The Call, features JPT’s Associate, Regional Director, Darren-erik Diaz, Assoc. AIA, in an article about Prime Healthcare, Landmark Medical Center’s new Cancer Center. Stella Lorence from The Call has written this article. She can be reached by email at slorance@woonsocketcall.com or on Twitter @slorence3. To view the article on The Call’s website, click here.
