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Portland-area leaders assembled around some oversized scissors Tuesday morning to mark the imminent opening of the $650 million Vista Pavilion, a project years in the making to expand bed capacity at Oregon Health & Science University.
“This will ease the burden of a cancer diagnosis,” U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) said in remarks before the ribbon cutting. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said the building was a great application of his “boom loop” theory, a “simple but very powerful mindset” of contagious public-spirited investment that is “helping to turn our city around.”
With soaring views and spacious single occupancy rooms, Vista Pavilion is part of a broader bid by OHSU—bankrolled in part by Phil and Penny Knight and led by Dr. Brian Druker—to provide cancer patients with a wraparound style of care, characterized by amenities and proactive concierge service.
“Patients will no longer have to sit in an admissions office waiting to go up to their room,” Druker said, offering a taste of the vision. “When they arrive, they’ll go straight up to their room, and the admissions officer will come to them.”
Work is not actually complete at Vista Pavilion; levels 3, 8, 9 and 10 remain full or partial shells, waiting to be finished. But 128 new inpatient beds go online with the floors set to immediately open. Future development, OHSU says, will add 56 more beds, along with a floor for radiology and imaging.
It’s a significant addition, OHSU notes, in a state with the second-lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the nation (Washington has the lowest). OHSU currently has 576 beds, and they have in recent years been perennially full. The Vista Pavilion, when totally built out, will increase this capacity by one-third.
As the event wrapped up Tuesday, a former patient, Alan Lynn, told his story of surviving leukemia and then advising on the new cancer care center. Recalling the antiseptic space where he’d himself received cancer treatment, he encouraged the mural art that now lines the Vista Pavilion’s walls.
Many stood and applauded his tale. Then Druker and OHSU president Shereef Elnahal hoisted their large scissors to chop a large ribbon in two, and cheers went up all around.
