When an outpatient with sickle cell anemia arrives at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in excruciating pain—a common effect of the disease—chances are he or she will be directed to the Sickle Cell Center for Adults in the hospital’s Carnegie Building instead of the Emergency Department.

The center provides patients with rapid medical relief for pain and other acute care condi­tions and supports them with wraparound services. However, the current space is small and cramped. At times, some patients must be turned away.

Currently, infusion services are delivered from three areas: the Sickle Cell Center in Carnegie, Adult Infusion Services on the sixth floor of the Osler Building, and Therapeutic Apheresis, which is located in Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center.

On May 8, that will change when all of those units move into the same building on one floor, in the renovated space of the Park Building (the former entrance to the Emergency Depart­ment). Patients will enter from the hospital’s main loop to get to the Infu­sion Center. The phone numbers will remain the same.

Sophie Lanzkron, director of the Sickle Cell Center for Adults and associate professor of medicine and oncology, says the patient experience will be greatly enhanced, particularly for her outpatients.

“It will be nice for patients to be in a private space with heated chairs and television. Their family members will be able to be with them [in the larger area],” she says. “The Sickle Cell Center will also be located close to the Hemapheresis and Transfusion Support (HATS) clinic, as many of our patients get their exchange transfusions done there,” says Lanzkron. She adds that the additional nursing staff that will be available in the facility will allow the center to care for more patients.

Louanne Morell, HATS manager, agreed that the proximity will benefit patients. “Currently, a patient comes for a therapeutic apheresis procedure in JHOC, and then goes across the street to the Infusion Clinic for medi­cation in Osler,” she explains.

In the Park Building, the patient would just have to walk next door for those same services. Morell says, “Since there is no travel time, the thought is that the patient can go from the HATS clinic to the Infusion Center—no long walk or wait for transport, no need to re-register, no need to sit in a waiting room.”