With the addition of the new Children’s Cancer and Multipurpose Infusion Center to the Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest campus, the 1210 building on South Cedar Crest Boulevard became entirely devoted to pediatric specialities. The grand opening took place July 18 and the center began receiving patients July 24.

“Only children will be seen and treated in this building going forward,” Bill Kent, president of Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest said. “Children are special patients. They have unique needs and concerns that are completely different from adults. By making this building a kids-only space, we focus on making their health care experience as comfortable and child- and family-friendly as it possibly can be.”

The child-friendly facility features brightly painted walls, floors dotted with colorful spots, patterned privacy curtains, artwork decorating the halls, a teen game room and TVs set up in each of the five infusion bays, in addition to four exam rooms, two negative pressure/isolation infusion rooms, a procedure room and a family resource center.

“[The center] is consolidating [patients’] care,” Department of Pediatrics Chair Nathan Hagstrom said. “Everything that a child with cancer goes through will now be done here at the Cedar Crest campus.”

Admissions, treatments, children’s ER visits, radiology scans and radiation therapy will all be handled in the same building.

By relocating the Lehigh Valley Physicians Group Pediatric Hematology Oncology center from the Lehigh Valley Hospital-Muhlenberg campus to Cedar Crest, patients will also have their entire medical team in one location.

“Having everybody in the same place, the same site, will facilitate teamwork and coordination,” Hagstrom said. “It’s not just making their care experience better, it will actually improve their care. Their care will just simply be better.”

As well as treating children with cancer, the center is also equipped to treat pediatric patients with hemophilia and gastrointestinal conditions and will be able to treat rheumatology and Niemann-Pick type C clinical trial patients in the future.

According to President and Chief Executive Officer of Lehigh Valley Health Network Brian Nester, “This new Children’s Cancer and Multipurpose Infusion Center represents hope for our entire community against disease that occurs regularly and randomly. It knows no geographic boundary, knows no socioeconomic class, it knows no ethnic group. Cancer is what it is, and we’re fighting it every single day, and we’ll fight it better here in this center today.”