LMH Health expands Cancer Center to meet growing patient demand

LMH Health’s updated Cancer Center opened to patients on July 14, 2025, after about a year of construction and renovation, and it was built around a simple capacity problem. LMH oncologists and hematologists had been handling more than 19,000 patient visits a year in a clinic originally designed for 2,400 patients when it opened in 2001.

For Lawrence and Douglas County patients, the renovation was meant to do more than add square footage. LMH says the center now has more treatment and exam rooms, a larger waiting room, an expanded laboratory area, patient education and consultation rooms, a family lounge area and modern pharmacy space for complex infusion medications. The center also includes semi-private and private treatment rooms, natural lighting, hereditary cancer risk assessment with genetic counseling and testing, cancer screening and diagnostic tests, survivor follow-up and multidisciplinary care for breast, colon, lung and other cancers.

LMH has described the goal as “world class care, close to home,” and the updated center is set up to make that promise more practical for patients who no longer need to chase as many services outside Lawrence. The center is Commission on Cancer-accredited, and LMH says its physicians are NCI-trained and experienced in solid tumors, hematologic cancers and benign blood disorders.

The project was funded with help from the community. The LMH Health Foundation began a major fundraising initiative in early 2021, and donors, foundations and community partners contributed more than $7.2 million to the renovation and expansion. LMH says the hospital is not taxpayer funded, provides more than $40 million in charitable care each year and serves as the area’s largest safety-net provider, with nearly $54 million in charitable care and financial assistance to more than 20,000 community members each year.

Getting to the finished center was not simple. During construction, the Cancer Center and all oncology services relocated to the third floor of the hospital from June through October 2024, then moved again when other patient-care space was needed during flu and COVID season. LMH said the team moved twice during construction, a disruption that underscored how tight the old space had become.

The expanded center now gives LMH more room to keep cancer care in Lawrence, from diagnosis and infusion treatment to genetic counseling and follow-up, instead of sending more patients across the region for services that can now be handled locally.