Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Lahey Health started construction on Monday on a hospital that will treat only cancer patients, as the Boston Globe’s Marin Wolf reports. It will have 300 beds and 450,000 square feet over 10 floors, on the Brookline Avenue site where the Joslin Diabetes Center used to be, and it is due to open in 2031 for patients who need to be admitted during treatment. The Globe puts the cost at $1.68 billion and calls it the first hospital of its kind in New England. It will be called the Lavine Bekenstein Cancer Hospital, after what Dana-Farber describes as the largest single gift in its history, a joint commitment from Josh and Anita Bekenstein and the Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine family.
Some division. $1.68 billion over 300 beds comes to $5.6 million a bed, and 450,000 square feet over 300 beds is 1,500 square feet a bed. Plenty of that space is not standard rooms: the plans include 30 intensive care beds, a 16-bed observation suite, and specialized air protection on four of the 10 floors to lower the infection risk for severely immunocompromised patients.
The more interesting question is why Dana-Farber needed a hospital at all. It is one of the best-known names in cancer care, and for decades its hospitalized patients were in Brigham and Women’s beds, reached by a bridge between the two buildings so patients and clinicians could cross easily. In 2023 Dana-Farber said it was leaving that partnership and teaming up with Beth Israel Lahey, the state’s second-largest health system and the main rival of the largest, Mass General Brigham. According to the Globe, the reason was that MGB was hesitant to help pay for a new building in which Dana-Farber would control more of the beds. Beth Israel, the paper says, “was game.”
Here is a hypothetical to show how that works. Imagine you run a famous outpatient brand that doesn’t own its inpatient beds. Patients see your doctors, and when they are sick enough to be admitted they go to your partner’s hospital. Your partner likes this. Now you ask the partner to help pay for a new building that moves those beds toward you. The partner would be paying for its own business to shrink, so it says no. A rival system with nothing to lose and a famous name to gain looks at the same request and says yes. So the bridge moves. The new hospital will connect to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, by both a bridge and a tunnel according to Becker’s coverage of the original 2024 proposal.
MGB did try to shrink the project. In March 2025 the Massachusetts Public Health Council voted unanimously to approve the hospital’s Determination of Need. The Globe reported at the time that approval came despite a plea from Mass General Brigham to scale it back. Dana-Farber cited a state independent cost analysis and a Health Policy Commission review that projected inpatient savings from its tie-up with Beth Israel Deaconess.
The slow divorce
Dana-Farber’s chief executive, Dr. Benjamin Ebert, told the Globe the handover is highly complex and will take several years. Dana-Farber and MGB don’t formally split until 2028. Between then and 2031, Dana-Farber’s hospitalized patients will stay at Beth Israel Deaconess, moved over from the Brigham in stages. On the outpatient side, patients who used to be treated at Beth Israel Deaconess will move to Dana-Farber clinics, and so will their doctors.
Breast oncology went first, also on Monday. Dr. Elizabeth Mittendorf, formerly of the Brigham, joined Beth Israel Deaconess in 2025 to run its new breast surgery division, and online records show at least two of the division’s nine other surgeons also came from the Brigham, the Globe says. Under the new setup, described by the hospitals as a full transition of breast oncology services, Dana-Farber handles outpatient care and the surgeries happen at Beth Israel. “Together, we are building something that has the potential to transform cancer care across our region while creating new opportunities to advance research and expand access to innovative therapies,” Beth Israel’s CEO, Dr. Kevin Tabb, said in a statement.
Patients don’t have to go along. Dana-Farber wrote to patients that anyone who wants to keep seeing a surgeon, radiation oncologist or other specialist at the Brigham will be supported. “If a patient says, ‘I want to have my surgery in New York, or at Mass. General, or in Paris, we work with those doctors. That happens all the time with our patients,” Ebert said. “In all cases, patients have the agency to choose who takes care of them.”
Sure. But when the surgeons themselves move across town, the default moves with them, and most people go with the default.
Meanwhile, at MGB
MGB is spending $400 million on its own cancer institute, with new construction and renovations at several sites. That is less than a quarter of $1.68 billion, but MGB already owns its hospitals. The Herb Chambers Tower on the Massachusetts General Hospital campus, paid for with $100 million from the auto dealer, is due to open in September 2027 with 228 inpatient beds. The Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute opened a breast clinic at the Brigham in May and says it will cover eight cancer specialties, including gastrointestinal and thoracic oncology, by November. Next month it opens an outpatient practice in the Hale Building for Transformative Medicine, which MGB says will “create a new home for patient-facing clinical research at the Brigham.” Care is also offered at Newton-Wellesley, Cooley Dickinson and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner hospitals.
The two marketing pitches line up neatly with what each side owns. MGB, which has a large network, says patients benefit from specialists working together across the whole system. Dana-Farber, which is building one very expensive building, says cancer is complex enough to need a hospital of its own. Both pitches might be right. It is still a coincidence worth noticing.
Anne Gross, Dana-Farber’s chief nursing officer, said she and other leaders spent more than a year designing patient rooms. They built mock rooms at 10 Brookline Place and asked design experts, staff and patients to review everything from the bathrooms to the adjustable lighting. Each room gets a refrigerator so families can keep patients’ favorite foods on hand, because “particularly with patients with cancer diseases, nutrition becomes extremely important,” Gross said. The observation suite is there so patients can finish treatment after the outpatient clinic closes for the day without being admitted. “We always try to prevent a hospital admission when we can,” Gross said. “Nobody wants to be in the hospital.” That is a nice line to hear at the groundbreaking of a $1.68 billion hospital, and it is also correct.
Then there is staffing. Dana-Farber plans to hire about 2,400 people over the next four years, including 400 nurses during the transition and 200 more for the intensive care and observation units when the hospital opens, so 600 nurses in all. The Globe expects this to sharpen competition with MGB for oncologists and other cancer clinicians. The two have already clashed over the physician assistants who work in the current partnership, though they later said they would cooperate better. All of this is happening in a market that Mayo Clinic has also been moving toward.
Formally, Dana-Farber and MGB stay partners until 2028. Until then, they are competitors who still share a bridge.