To provide easily accessible oncology services for the community and region, Mission Hospitals consolidated their services into one location. The new comprehensive cancer care program occupied a 117,000 square foot five-level freestanding building on its main campus in Asheville, North Carolina. Mission Hospitals’ Vision 2020 — A Healthier Community — is to improve the health of the people of western North Carolina and the surrounding region. This facility provides an integrated patient experience including diagnos¬tic, treatment, and support services offered to patients and family members to create a comprehensive center between the various cancer providers in a single location.

 

The cancer center seeks to create a sustainable, as well as, a physical and spiritual healing environment by providing easily accessible resources to the patient and family members, access to views and natural light, and the use of warm non-institutional regional materials.

 

Situated on a steeply sloped site, the landscape has been terraced and utilized as an integral design element. Spaces within the cancer care program that would normally not receive any natural daylight, such as the radiation therapy and PET CT suite on the terrace level, now would have access to natural light from skylights and windows in patient care and treatment areas.

 

The radiation therapy suite will accommodate space for two linear accelerators, one cyber knife, and CT Simulator room. The PET CT suite will be accessed through its own entrance but will benefit from an adjacency to the radiation therapy space.