LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — Medical professionals, community members, and elected officials joined CARTI on Friday for the unveiling of the state’s first cancer surgery center.
The 57 thousand-square-foot facility includes 6 large operating rooms, 14 pre-op and post-op rooms, 12 recovery rooms, and eight private overnight rooms.
The CARTI Surgery Center also features an interventional radiology suite, a cystoscopy room for urology procedures, and a minor procedure room.
Adam Head, CEO and president at CARTI, said CARTI has been helping patients since 1976 and said this new center was much needed.
“We resolutely decided as an organization that trusted care should never mean leaving our state,” Head said. “That commitment has created a different level of accountability for us to disrupt historical norms for cancer treatments.”
The center contains pre-op rooms with special lighting and imagery to help patients relax before surgery and two da Vinci robotic-assisted technology to help perform non-invasive surgery.
“Robotic surgery will lead to significant benefits,” Scott Stern, M.D. and oncologist at CARTI Cancer Center, said. “[That includes] improved safety, reduced risk, and a faster pathway to recovery.”
Stern stressed the center was more than just an ‘architectural gem’, and noted it was ‘patient driven’.
“It’s an opportunity to improve the quality of life for our patients and for all Arkansans throughout their cancer surgery,” Stern said. “Every detail of the building from the natural lighting in our operating room to the calming recovery spaces and the inspiration garden, was designed and built with comfort and healing in mind.”
The new surgery center is expected to create up to 80 new jobs.
