Milestones met as Winship at Emory Midtown reaches first anniversary

In May 2023 we celebrated the dream coming true in Midtown Atlanta as Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown opened its doors and introduced an entirely new model of patient-centered cancer care. In the year since, the new care center has already made tremendous strides toward fulfilling the challenge from the center’s most generous donor, the Woodruff Foundation, to “build something never seen or imagined.”

In its first year, Winship at Emory Midtown has already hired and onboarded more than 500 new care team members and implemented a unique care model that integrates outpatient and inpatient care and brings collaborative care from multiple disciplines to the patient in one place. The design and construction of the building and the marketing campaign aimed at letting others know about the new center and care model have won numerous awards.

“I’d say the dream has come true,” says Sheryl Bluestein, Winship’s senior vice president of cancer service line operations at Emory Healthcare. As proof, she cites the continued increase in patient experience scores. “We’ve improved almost 10 points in our ‘likelihood to recommend.’” She adds that quality metrics, increased patient participation in clinical trials, employee satisfaction and outpaced financial goals also point to a dream that is coming to fruition.

“We had some initial growing pains just getting into a new space and learning how to use it,” says Winship Executive Director Suresh R. Ramalingam, MD, the Roberto C. Goizueta Distinguished Chair for Cancer Research at Emory University School of Medicine. “Rolling out a whole new care model was a challenge that our teams were ready for. We have learned a lot from the initial months and now are at a place where the center is proving to be a major asset for providing care for patients.”

Sagar Lonial, MD, Winship’s chief medical officer and chair of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine, says, “The process for designing this space was truly unique, as evidenced by the engagement of the architects, construction teams and everyone on our care teams.” Looking ahead, he adds, “Seeing the work and model validated with such positive comments and such an improvement in the patient experience really sends a message that we need to keep innovating and putting the patient at the center of the model, which is very exciting and rewarding.”

“Our patient feedback has been extremely positive,” says Nicole Bansavage, DNP, RN, OCN, Winship’s interim vice president of oncology nursing and specialty director. “They are enjoying being at the center of everything that we do.”

Of course, there have been challenges with settling into the new building and implementing a new care model. But Bansavage says, “The energy level is still pretty high considering everything we’ve gone through this past year. We have to always pivot and navigate new things that we weren’t expecting to come up, just based on a new building with a new care model. But ultimately, the patients love it.”

And happy patients mean happy employees. Ramalingam adds, “The icing on the cake is when patients appreciate what happens there and how they’re cared for. That positive reinforcement plays a major role in employee retention.”

In fact, early performance indicators include a 6% employee retention increase over baseline. “I expected those scores to be pretty low when we first moved into the building because it was a whirlwind,” says Lynn Whitehair, director of operations for Winship at Emory Midtown. “It turned out to be one of our higher scores, meaning that our employees are very engaged and very excited and happy about the new structure.”

Looking at the collaboration and planning that went into developing the new center and care model, Amy Breakstone, MPH, project administrator for Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown, says it was one thing to be challenged to develop a novel building and care model, but quite another to bring people on board and actually rise to the challenge. But “it’s created this optimization and enhancement for our patients, and I think that, ultimately, they’re the ones who are winning. Because of that, our staff are overall satisfied working in this environment because the patients love it so much.”

In his role as both the associate chief medical officer for Winship at Emory Midtown and as a board-certified surgical oncologist, Kenneth Cardona, MD, says, “The impact that we’re making with this center is the motivator and driver to keep going.” He adds, “It continues to be exciting and inspiring for us, the clinicians, to see the work that we’re able now to deliver for our patients.”

An important component of the planning process behind the new center was visits to other cancer centers around the country to learn, observe and adapt from them. Now it has come full circle as visitors from across the U.S. and abroad come to Atlanta to visit and learn from Winship at Emory Midtown.

“Before we built the center we went and toured other facilities,” says Bluestein, “So we have this mentality of paying it forward. We want to share it. We want to show it off.” She points out that almost 40 tours have been given to date. “It’s almost a full-time job for somebody to help coordinate all the tours,” she says.

Those visitors have the opportunity to learn how Winship is implementing all that was learned from other centers, as well as from our first-year lessons. “We are providing them with all our experience,” says Cardona, “our wins and our opportunities where we’re still looking to fine-tune and make improvements.”

After already exceeding first-year forecasts—including numbers of patients, procedures and employees retained—Whitehair foresees “lots of growth.” She adds, “Now that we’re settled in and we’ve got things humming pretty well, we are onboarding more physicians and advanced practice providers that are excited to have clinic time in this wonderful new model of care. We are also excited to have them working with us.”

Near-term plans include adding more physicians and other staff, advancing plans for the outdoor garden, offering therapeutic art classes and addressing some of the building needs like temperature control. It’s a safe bet to say there will be new challenges to meet—and new opportunities.

“When you look at what’s happening in this new center, it’s a perfect symphony,” Ramalingam says. “You have so many services—radiation oncology, medical oncology, surgery, interventional radiology, imaging, pharmacy services, laboratory services. We now have a nucleus of people who can make the symphony work well. And the music is going to get better and better!”