New cancer center breaks ground in Post Falls
Area’s population growth warrants new facility
POST FALLS – Cancer patients on the Rathdrum Prairie will soon have fewer complication to deal with when it comes to their treatment.
By next September, they won’t have to drive into Coeur d’Alene for radiation, chemotherapy or other doctor visits because Kootenai Health’s Post Falls cancer treatment center will be open just east of Idaho Street on Mullan Avenue.
With the fast pace of population growth in the western part of the county and a Coeur d’Alene cancer treatment center busting at the seams, opening a new cancer care facility in Post Falls was an obvious move, said Kootenai Health officials at a groundbreaking ceremony last week.
“We’re obviously very elated about the prospects out here in this location,” said Jim Curtis, chairman of the Kootenai Hospital District Board of Trustees.
The two-story, 21,000-square-foot facility will feature state-of-the-art equipment, doctors’ offices and a healing garden outside.
Kootenai Health will spend $14.6 million to build and equip it. The radiation therapy equipment alone will cost $3.5 million.
Kootenai Health opened its Coeur d’Alene cancer center in 1987. Since then a second branch was opened in Sandpoint, but the Coeur d’Alene center was beginning to face crowding issues.
The main cancer center in Coeur d’Alene has already been expanded twice, and it now gets 50,000 patient visits each year.
Projections show Kootenai County chemotherapy patient numbers growing 53 percent by 2016 and radiation therapy patient numbers climbing 49 percent during the same time frame.
“It’s just gotten bigger than we can handle in that facility,” Curtis said.
The Schneidmiller family donated the 10-acre Post Falls site to Kootenai Health in the mid-1990s. A medical office park was built there in 1997.
“Our goal for having a campus in Post Falls was to have a larger primary care base and more convenient and better access to diagnostic and specialty services,” said Kootenai Health CEO Joe Morris.
That has happened, with other medical and dental offices locating near Kootenai Health’s Post Falls campus.
The cancer center is the next step.
Architects Rann Haight and Roy Marshall have designed a building and gardens that will feel comfortable to patients rather than clinical. The healing gardens and large windows for natural light are prominent features in the design.
“We think it’s designed from a patient and family viewpoint,” Morris said. “It will be a peaceful, restful place.”