Final phase of UC Health's Blood Cancer Healing Center renovation begins

Construction crews broke ground in July on the final phase of the University of Cincinnati Cancer Center's Blood Cancer Healing Center, which will see the fourth and fifth floors of the building fit out with increased patient care and research infrastructure.

The Cincinnati Business Courier covered the news as the Cancer Center continues to renovate the former Shriners Hospital into one of the nation's most comprehensive blood cancer facilities.

The fourth and fifth floor renovations will include wet and dry lab space for university and industry researchers, wellness areas for food as medicine and mind and movement therapies.

Clinical operations in the building opened in July. It is the only blood cancer center in the nation where patients can access all their care — inpatient and outpatient, survivorship, integrative medicine, spiritual care, bench-to-bedside research and more — in one accessible building.

"The Blood Cancer Healing Center embodies a new chapter in cancer care. With personalized, holistic care and pioneering research coming together under one roof, we are not just treating patients; we are giving them hope for a brighter future,” John Byrd, MD, a University of Cincinnati Cancer Center physician-researcher and the Gordon and Helen Hughes Taylor Professor and Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, said. “Today, because of breakthroughs in blood cancer research,  patients diagnosed with blood cancer, depending upon the type, can manage it and live for many years. For others, we still have lots of work to do, but the new therapies pursued in this center will hopefully afford progress toward this. This facility represents a significant step forward in our mission to provide the best possible care for those affected by blood cancers." 

Work on the upper floors is expected to be completed by December 2025.

Read the Cincinnati Business Courier article. (Note: Subscription may be required to access full article.)

Featured photo at top of the outside of the Blood Cancer Healing Center. Photo/Andrew HIgley/UC Marketing + Brand.