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Lansing doctors plan new cancer center

July 5, 2011

A group of Lansing area doctors are planning to build a facility geared to offer new options for cancer patients in the area.

The affiliated physicians and businesses — collectively named Compass Health Care — are amid securing approval to open an outpatient cancer treatment center and will be ready to serve patients by late 2012 or early 2013, said Joe Wald, a spokesman for the physicians and an instructor in the MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

The building is slated to be a two-story, 22,000-square-foot office structure named Compass Cancer Center and has a sticker price of more than $9 million.

Wald said the group has not released the prospective site, as they are in continuing negotiations with the developer. The Lansing State Journal reported Compass Health Care’s certificate of need of application to the state as being listed on a vacant site just south of Lake Lansing Road, at 2170 Coolidge Road.

East Lansing Planning and Zoning Administrator Darcy Schmitt said the city has received no official site plan application for the structure, and the planning department has not yet been contacted by the developers about the construction plans.

Compass Health Care is waiting for the center’s plans to be approved by the state of Michigan, which altogether is about a three- to five-month process, Wald said.

The doctors all have existing affiliations with local medical institutions, including MSU, Ingham Regional Medical Center, Sparrow Health System and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, according to a press release.

Dr. Anas Al-janadi, director of the MSU Breslin Cancer Center, said the structure will be the first independent cancer center in Greater Lansing.

“There is no such center like his one yet,” Al-janadi said.

Al-janadi said the move is somewhat unusual for current medical industry trends, as more cancer treatment centers are merging with hospitals for financial security and access to cheap medicines.

The center will treat cancers including breast, prostate, brain, skin, cervical, colorectal and lung cancers and employ between 10-20 full-time employees.

“It will be the most advanced, state-of-the-art treatment,” Wald said.

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