CANTON, Ga. — The Northside Hospital Cherokee in Canton has been making plans to upgrade and build a new hospital for close to 10 years. Construction began in Jan. 2014, with the new updated hospital slated to open on May 6, replacing the old 1960 facility that is still currently in use in North Canton. The new full-service community hospital will have more than 600 physicians and 1,700 employees.

The budget for the new 700,000-square-foot Cherokee hospital is $280 million, with 300 more employees than the old hospital, according to a statement. The architect on the project is Howell Rusk Dodson Architects (HRD) in Atlanta, and the general contractor is Batson Cook (also in Atlanta). Construction is already complete on the new hospital, according to Dale Lee, lead design architect at HRD, and will open with more than twice the square footage as the old hospital. Northside Hospital staff is focused on training and education between now and when hospital doors open, while overseeing the installations of equipment and furniture. The goal of the new hospital is to replace the existing facility with state-of-the-art modernized features, expansion capabilities for future growth and to upgrade the level of service for the people of Canton, according to Lee.

The new hospital is built on 50 acres of land, and will have 150 patient rooms, including a 24-bed ICU unit, 45 emergency department exam rooms, inpatient and outpatient radiology and cardiology, and six operating rooms, according to Lee. It will also have a cancer center and infusion center, an outpatient surgery center, and a 900-space parking deck. The new hospital will also have a women’s center — which the previous hospital did not — that will have 13 labor and delivery rooms, two C-Section rooms, and a Zen garden built outside, according to Lee.

Design aspects of the hospital were inspired by the Cherokee community, following Cherokee’s motto, “Where metro meets the mountains,” according to Lee. “We wanted to create some nice public spaces. We wanted to make sure we combined high end materials that you would want in a hospital, but also to use materials that are native to the area that offer warmth and a feeling of comfort,” said Lee. To achieve this, HRD used a combination of high-tech materials and design including metals, panels, and using clean lines in combination with stone walls, wood walls and very ‘earth-like materials,’” according to Lee. Much of the art in the hospital also comes from local artists and photographers.

The building is also designed and oriented to give patients beautiful views, according to Lee. “Creating a connection between the inside and the outdoors was a really important part of the design. There is so much natural light coming into the building, you don’t even need lights on most of the time,” said Lee. That said, 50 percent of the building’s light fixtures will be energy-efficient LED lighting, according to a statement.

To create a community feel, there is a large dining space called The Galleria with a large outdoor terrace space intended to be used by the public for community events, or simply to go out to lunch, according to Lee. “The new hospital will become a destination for the community to visit for pleasure in addition to going to the hospital when someone is sick. That’s something you don’t see every day,” said Lee. “This is what I personally enjoy about designing hospitals — helping people and giving the community something they can be proud of,” Lee said.

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While the current hospital is able to provide surgery and chemotherapy, it’s not equipped for radiation therapy. The cancer center will be teaming up with Elekta, a company that develops health care products and cancer treatment planning systems for radiation therapy, radiosurgery and brachytherapy, has partnered with the cancer center to bring Versa HD radiotherapy, which is a radiation treatment system designed to improve cancer patient care by allowing physicians to treat a broad spectrum of tumors throughout the body, while enabling treatment of highly complex cancers that require extreme targeted precision. Jordan Valley Medical Center will be the first hospital in Utah to introduce Versa HD. This new treatment will be able to help thousands of more people who are suffering from cancer and give them a chance of returning to their old life. Unfortunately, sickness, nausea, and swelling as side effects of this treatment but will the help of CBD oil, these conditions can be managed.

“The Versa HD system will bring some of the most advanced and up-to-date technology to Jordan Valley Medical Center and allow our doctors to offer sophisticated radiation therapy treatments to the patients in our care,” said Mark Reilly, M.D., radiation oncologist from Gamma West, in a statement.

Designed by Salt Lake City-based TSA Architects and developed by Rockworth Companies in Sandy, Utah, the $7 million cancer center will break ground this fall through Rimrock Construction, based in Draper, Utah.

Angela Evatz, who will be the cancer center’s director, said the initial design concept was primarily related to choosing a suitable space on the medical campus that provides all the services needed by cancer patients, while being efficient for staff and design complementary to other hospital and campus buildings.

For example, she said, “A patient who needs radiation therapy as part of his or her comprehensive treatment must first have a CT scan in the radiology department. The results of the CT scan will then guide the treatment planning – this happens prior to receiving the radiation therapy. By having the Cancer Center placed in close proximity to the existing radiology department, the patient does not need to visit multiple locations on the campus, but rather can receive multiple services in one place at the cancer center.

“In addition to being beneficial to patient care, this type of cancer center design alleviates the additional expense of purchasing another CT machine, allowing for full use of the existing technology and helping to maintain affordable health care costs.”

Jordan Valley has been busy with other expansion projects over the last five years. Its most recent inpatient tower addition allowed the medical center to accommodate more patients in the ICU and increased the number of nursing units that provide specialized services such as orthopedics.

“Our goal at Jordan Valley Medical Center is to meet the health care needs of the rapidly growing communities we serve,” Evatz said. “In reviewing our cancer services, we felt it was vital to our patients overall health care that we offer new and advanced cancer services.

“Currently many patients living in the west and south Salt Lake City valley must travel in excess of 20 miles to receive comprehensive cancer care; this can be an additional hardship to patients and their families. By creating the Cancer Center at Jordan Valley Medical Center, a convenient location to serve the west and south Salt Lake City residents, we can provide quality cancer care in close proximity to our patients’ homes.”

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