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West Virginia University Health System's quest to build a new standalone cancer hospital in Morgantown got a boost Tuesday from a $50 million gift from the Hazel Ruby McQuain Charitable Trust.
The gift is from the trust of the philanthropist who in 1983 provided $8.5 million to build what became the J.W. Memorial Hospital flagship of WVU Medicine. The cancer hospital will be built within the next five years or so on the lefthand-side facing the Ruby campus, on the opposite end of where the new Children's Hospital went up. It will have state-of-the-art treatment, surgical suites, procedural spaces and inpatient rooms as well as infusion areas, among other things. It will also be connected, like the children's hospital, to Ruby.
"It will have its own separate entrance and be freestanding," said WVU Health System President and CEO Albert L. Wright Jr.
Wright said the purpose of the new hospital will be to improve the trajectory of cancer care in West Virginia and its surrounding areas of service, including southwestern Pennsylvania from its WVU Medicine Uniontown Hospital. It's also recently been building out several programs, including hematology/oncology and cancer prevention/control.
WVU Medicine has under Wright also received $50 million from the West Virginia Legislature to pursue National Cancer Institute designation, which would put the program and its associated parts at WVU in a select national category. UPMC Hillman Cancer Center is the only nearby National Cancer Institute designated program. It's also building a cancer treatment facility in Wheeling at the old Ohio Valley Medical Center site.
The cancer hospital, which could cost upward of $500 million, will take at least five years to fundraise and build. That is near the the time frame for the system's NCI initiative.
A preliminary plan has been put together but a permanent architect and construction team hasn't yet been selected. The new cancer hospital will also depend on the demolition and moving of the WVU Medicine Eye Institute, which is where the new cancer hospital will be built.