Centra has purchased the University of Virginia’s (U.Va.) Hope Cancer Center’s oncology clinic, located in Centra Southside Community Hospital on Oak Street in Farmville.

The transition was effective Friday, April 1, according to a Centra news release.

“This hospital-based outpatient facility will remain located in the Centra Southside Community Hospital,” Centra officials said in the news release. “A team of board-certified physicians and highly-skilled clinicians will collaborate on personalized treatment plans and will continue to support patients through every step of the cancer journey. The familiar and friendly nursing staff of the former Hope Cancer Center will continue to care for patients in the Centra Southside Hematology Oncology clinic,” officials said.

The current seven employees with the center will remain with Centra, according to Centra Director of Practice Operations Katie Kirby.

“We plan to continue basically the same service, which is hematology, oncology,” Kirby said. “So, it’s chemotherapy treatments, follow-ups, blood disorders, those kinds of things.”

“Physicians Dwight Oldham, Stefan Gorsch, Emanuel Cirenza and others from Lynchburg Hematology & Oncology will be seeing patients in the Farmville clinic,” officials said in the release. “Centra and U.Va. have worked diligently during this transition to ensure treatment plans are not interrupted.”

“Our patients and this community will be our primary focus as we go through this transition,” said Centra Southside Community Hospital Vice President and CEO Thomas Angelo. “We are committed to making this a positive experience for our patients and employees.”

“I think that it will benefit the community just having the clinic part of Centra, where it’s already located within the four Centra walls, and we are partnering with the clinic that is currently located within the Pearson Cancer Center in Lynchburg,” Kirby said. “So, we’ll have physician resources, community resources, things like that that are offered through Pearson Cancer Center.”

“It will be Centra Southside Hematology Oncology instead of Hope,” she said of the center’s name.