San Antonio Regional Hospital on Tuesday broke ground on a new annex that will make the oncology services of the City of Hope available to patients locally.
San Antonio Hospital, which has been in existence in Upland since 1907, over the last six years has been engaged in a series of planned expansion stages intended to increase the number of beds at the institution from 271 to over 400.
The $160 million four-story Vineyard Tower at 999 San Bernardino Road, which expanded the number of stations in the hospital’s emergency room from 34 to 52, created and outfitted 12 more intensive care units and added 92 more beds, opened earlier this year. Tuesday’s groundbreaking was for a $30 million, 60,000-square-foot structure at 1100 San Bernardino Road that is to house an ambulatory care center as well as a City of Hope outpatient cancer center on the first floor.
The City of Hope facilities will offer chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical services, said Letisia Marquez, the media relations manager for the City of Hope in Duarte. The opening target date is early 2019, according to Marquez.
The Upland location will be of benefit to local cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, as the treatment regimen they are subjected to can greatly weaken and fatigue them. Having the outpatient center in Upland can reduce the traveling distance for many of those patients and their families by as much as 24 miles.
Upon opening, the City of Hope’s outpatient oncology center in Upland will represent what Harlan Levine, MD, the chief executive for the City of Hope Medical Foundation characterized as the “most comprehensive facility between Duarte and Loma Linda.”
The second floor of the new building will house a women’s imaging center, featuring the latest versions of mammography scanners.