The treatment of cancer is about more than just healing environments. Changing cancer incident rates, advances in cancer research and treatment technologies, an aging and increasingly savvy patient population looking for quality outcomes and convenience, and regulatory and reimbursement pressures will all continue to shape the delivery of cancer care services and the facilities needed to support those services.

As patient treatment protocols become more individualized and complex, patient care teams are getting larger and require more coordination and communication than ever, cutting across traditional departmental boundaries. Advances in technology, linkages with tertiary partners, and declining reimbursement for private physician practices will drive business for some programs back into community hospital settings. At the same time, academic medical centers will continue to leverage their research base, access to protocols, and high end treatment capabilities into higher market share and more successful recruitment of patients into clinical trials. All providers are looking for ways to provide services more efficiently and productively as insurers clamp down on profit margins.

These challenges mean that cancer care facilities need to support new operating models and evolving treatment modalities to be competitive in the market place. In particular, facilities need to support:

- Development of multidisciplinary teams and processes
- Integration of multiple treatment modalities, preferable in close proximity
- Shift of treatment to more targeted, less invasive therapies
- Incorporation of translational research
- Provision of related ancillary services, prevention/wellness programs and support services for survivors
- Flexible treatment capacity efficiently utilized by multiple patient types and specialists
- Safe and attractive patient care environments