Winship at Emory Midtown expands patient care

Winship Cancer Institute at Emory University Hospital Midtown (Winship at Emory Midtown) is at the forefront of cancer care in Georgia. In 2019, Winship opened a new multidisciplinary head and neck cancer clinic at Emory Midtown, welcomed a genitourinary cancer team to Winship's Clinical Trials Office, and began construction on a new 17-story facility dedicated solely to cancer care and cancer research.

The Winship Head and Neck Cancer Clinic, which celebrated its one-year anniversary in May, is one of the first facilities developed around The Winship Way, an approach that stresses the integration of cancer research with care and the coordination of services to make the patient experience seamless and comfortable. This clinic, on the 10th floor of the medical office tower, was designed to bring physicians and other specialists specializing in head and neck cancer to the patient instead of requiring the patient move from place to place across the hospital campus.

Winship's Head and Neck Cancer Clinic is the model for Winship at Emory Midtown, the new cancer facility under construction. The new facility will feature 2-story care communities for patients with specific types of cancer. Construction on the building is well underway with foundational work for floor Level 0G complete and ongoing efforts to relocate utilities from overhead to underground. The Winship at Emory Midtown Care Design Team, which has been involved in the planning and design of the building since its inception, oversees the progress of construction, and continues to focus on important details, including functionality.

"I am pleased at the progress of Winship's programs on the Emory Midtown campus and happy that we are paving the way for this unique facility designed for truly patient-centered cancer care," says Sheryl Bluestein, vice president of operations at Emory University Hospital Midtown. "In addition to physical expansion, we have also welcomed a new genitourinary cancer clinic and a number of new Winship providers to Emory Midtown."

The Winship at Emory Midtown Clinical Trials Office is expanding an already robust program to include genitourinary cancer trials in the next few months. It also has been running groundbreaking multidisciplinary research trials in which patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have been treated with low-dose chest radiation therapy to reduce the severe pulmonary inflammation caused by COVID-19. Winship was the first in the world to launch a study of this treatment, which depended on a collaboration of Winship radiation oncologists, led by Mohammad K. Khan, MD, PhD, with hospital critical care physicians and infectious disease specialists. The phase III study testing this approach is now underway on three Emory campuses. Results for the phase I/II study were published in the peer-reviewed journal, Cancer, in late September, and will be presented at upcoming conferences for the Radiation Research Society and the American Society of Radiation Oncology.

Winship teams draw on the more than 1,200 physicians and 440 private practice providers at Midtown, specializing in various treatment modalities including radiation oncology, medical oncology, surgical oncology, and benign hematology. Led by Manila Gaddh, MD the Benign Hematology Program led the hospital's guideline development for providing follow-up care to patients with COVID-19 related thrombosis. Along with the genitourinary cancer clinic, which includes medical oncologists Bradley C. Carthon, MD, PhD, and Bassel Nazha, MD, MPH, Winship at Emory Midtown welcomed Anant Mandawat, MD, director of Winship's Cardio-Oncology Program.

Head and neck cancer experts James Bates, MD, Jill Remick, MD, and Soumon Rudra, MD, and Kaiser Permanente providers Daniel Tanenbaum, MD, and Eddie Zhang, MD recently joined the radiation oncology program at Emory Midtown.

"Winship at Emory Midtown provides patients comprehensive care featuring several world-renowned experts making innovative discoveries in cancer care and specialized facilities designed to put the patient first," says Walter J. Curran, Jr., MD, Winship executive director, Lawrence W. Davis Chair in Radiation Oncology, and the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and Chair in Cancer Research. "The advances being made at Emory Midtown demonstrate our dedication to ensuring patients are at the center of everything that we do."