$193 million Jellison Cancer Institute tower opens Monday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital

SARASOTA – The new $193 million Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute built on the Sarasota campus of Sarasota Memorial Hospital has 56 private suites for hospitalized cancer patents, nine dedicated operating rooms and three of the latest da Vinci Surgical System robots.

But the heart of the institute, may be the multidisciplinary cancer conference room, on the third floor of the 170,000-square foot facility, said medical director Dr. Richard Brown.

“For oncology now, it’s about multidisciplinary care,” Brown said during a media tour this week of the facility, which is scheduled to open Monday. “This is where the surgeons, the medical oncologists, the radiation oncologists, radiologists as well as pathologists as well as navigators, nursing and even pharmacists all come.”

Doctors can bring their most challenging cases, or even routine ones, to assess the best course of treatment.

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A place for challenging cases

“Cancer being very complex, you want to get the best opinions you can,” Brown later added. “The perspective of a surgeon may be different than the perspective of the medicine doctor, from the radiation oncologist, from the radiologist.

“So, it’s not uncommon for, say cancer of the liver, you could treat it with radiation, you could treat it with chemotherapy – immunotherapy – you could treat it with surgery or you could treat it with radiology.

“When we get together in a room and we have four different approaches, we’re all saying what is best for that patient.”

In addition to the enhanced opportunity for collaboration, the new Jellison Institute will allow patients to receive care for all their cancer-related in-patient needs in one place, and in the Sarasota area, instead of out of town. That means added touches like nurses being cross-trained in cancer-related medical and surgical protocols, and navigators – nurses with additional training to help patients sort through the different specialists as they learn about their treatment options.

“The navigator’s role is to help educate,” Brown said. “You have a new diagnosis; you’re scared and it’s nice to have someone who’s going to help and guide you in terms of this journey you’re going to be on from Point A of a new diagnosis to hopefully Point B of being cured.’

Sarasota Memorial Hospital Sarasota Campus President Lorrie Liang echoed that thought.

“Cancer is a journey and sometimes it’s on an outpatient basis and sometimes it’s needs to be on an inpatient basis, so this will be the centerpiece for all that inpatient care,” she said.

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November is a busy month for Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, which is in the midst of a rolling opening of the new Sarasota Memorial Hospital Venice campus, as well as opening the Jellison Institute.

The institute was named in memory of the late Brian Jellison, former CEO and chairman of Lakewood Ranch-based Roper Technologies, who died of cancer in 2018, following a September 2020 donation of $25 million by the Brian and Sheila Jellison Family Foundation to the Sarasota Memorial Health Care Foundation.

SMH is currently planning an outpatient cancer pavilion across the street from the Jellison Institute tower, while the Radiation Oncology Center is located at Sarasota Memorial’s University Parkway campus. The hospital is also planning to open a cancer center in Venice.

The inpatient care at the Jellison Institute is improved because related departments are all centralized.

For example, Liang said the nine new operating rooms are larger and equipped with the latest safety procedures, such as stainless-steel walls and CLEANSUITE ceiling air filtration and circulation systems.

“We also have pathology right outside, so when surgeons are doing their surgery, they can send their specimens out, they don’t need to scrub out,” she added. “Pathology can look at the tumor, see if they have clean margins, converse with the surgeon.

“The surgeons can see what the pathologists are seeing in the microscope and know if they’ve completed the surgery or if they have to continue.”

The eight-floor Jellison Institute does have internal connections to the rest of the hospital and is designed to be all-inclusive for cancer treatment.

The first two floors include reception, a surgical waiting area with private consultation rooms and a conference and education center.

The third floor includes an integrated care suite that’s home to oncology patient navigation, the thrive oncology program and oncology counseling, 22 pre- and post-operation patient suites in addition to the multidisciplinary cancer conference room.

The fourth floor is home to the nine operating rooms as well as 14 post-surgical patient bays – essentially where patients are monitored after surgery, while their anesthesia wears off.

The fifth floor includes the oncology and surgical pharmacy, as well as a sterile processing area.

Private patient suites

The 56 private patient suites are split between the sixth and seventh floors. Each floor also has a family center featuring a kitchen and dining area and a lounge with charging stations. The sixth floor has a specialized consult room and the seventh a symptom management suite.

Kelly Batista, executive director of the Jellison Cancer Institute noted that those areas were designed more for family comfort and intentionally don’t include typical vending machines.

The eighth floor is dedicated to a rooftop cafe that includes an outdoor seating area with a panoramic view of Sarasota Bay.

Those 56 private patient suites come equipped with interactive tablet technology that allow medical personnel to keep all relevant patient information on an iPad-style tablet outside the door, which connects to a touchscreen “white board” inside the suite.

Medical staff can also communicate with the patient via a videoconference, if need be.

“These boards are going to be really, really important for us in the future,” Brown said, then added currently that type of information “doesn’t really exist outside of a chart.”

The most futuristic aspect of the operating rooms is the da Vinci robot system.

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With the aid of surgical robots, doctors can make smaller incisions for even big surgeries, such as removal of a pancreas, that help lead to faster recovery times, shorter lengths of hospital stays and less patient pain.

“You’re operating through very small holes vs. very large incisions,” Brown said. “Robots add a degree of dexterity that you don’t just have.”

The tradeoff is that the robots can't transmit tactile sense to the surgeon, who can’t feel the area.

“They learn how to do things without tactile sense,” Brown added.

Meanwhile, the menu of that rooftop cafe is designed to promote the type of healthy eating options that medical professionals would like cancer survivors and their family members pursue.

“It was developed with our registered dieticians and our patient advisory council, really focused on what we want our patients and survivors to be eating,” Batista said. “So, it’s a lot of fresh, made-to-order foods here, a full juice and smoothie bar, which is exciting for everyone as well, a lot of plant-based whole food options.

“So, you can have grain balls or salads. You can have a vegan option with tofu or building on a protein with chicken or fish.”

While state-of-the-art equipment can grab headlines, Batista stressed that the Jellison Institute tower was designed with the patient in mind.

“We talked a lot about the technical and the technology,” Batista said after the conclusion of the media tour. “But what really drove us to build this building and design the building that we did was the patient’s experience.

“We touch on a lot of things here; we say how many O-R’s we talk about technology,” Batista said, then added because patient care is so ingrained in the hospital’s mission, it’s sometimes overlooked when explaining the facility to others.

“In our organization it’s so central to who we are, that we always begin with the patient,” Batista said. “But we forget to mention it.”

Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Memorial opens Brian D. Jellision Cancer Institute tower