Morrison Cancer Center staff welcomes first patients at new location

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) - Morrison Cancer Center opened up to the public at the Grand Island Regional Medical Center campus Monday. The facility is a 15,000 square foot, state-of-the-art cancer treatment center located inside of the Prairie Commons Medical Office building.

The new location is almost identical in terms of the size and services offered compared to the location at Mary Lanning Healthcare in Hastings, NE.

Mark Callahan, chief operating officer of Mary Lanning, said the idea to extend the cancer center to Grand Island had come up awhile back.

“We had initial conversation about eight years and just as things developed, Grand Island Regional came out of the ground; it was just a great opportunity for us to work with Grand Island Regional Medical Center to develop this cancer center,” Callahan said.

The facility offers services such as imaging, immunotherapy, chemotherapy as well as an in-house pharmacy available to patients. There is also a section where specialty doctors are able to come in and treat people who need certain treatments.

Medical director for the Morrison Cancer Center, Sitki Copur, said, before, cancer patients would visit the Mary Lanning Specialty Clinic in Grand Island, but with the new facility, there would be no reason for them to have an appointment there. The new cancer center offered patients more services than they could find at the specialty clinic.

“We will be providing all 100% cancer services on site and it will save our patients driving to Hastings,” Copur said. “We already have an established patient population and our patients are as excited as we are.”

He added, many of the patients they were seeing at Mary Lanning lived in Grand Island, making the new facility a bit shorter of a drive for those people.

Callahan said offering this new facility offers cancer treatment services at a more convenient location for these folks.

“The real exciting part is, because, you know, when you have cancer, you want to stay close to home, you want to stay where family is, you don’t want to be miles away,” Callahan said. “So, just knowing we’re going to be able to provide these services — it’s a great feeling.”

Callahan added, the staff was top of the line at the Morrison Cancer Center.

Copur said the cancer center would not only have an impact on its community, it also meant a lot to the staff.

“This is an amazing time for us,” Copur said. “This was our dream for so many years and its great to see that have been real now.”

In the near future, the Grand Island Morrison Cancer Center is planned to offer patients a PET scanner and radiation oncology. The radiation therapy was expected to open summer 2022.

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