The High River Cancer Care Centre expansion was unveiled Thursday night to hundreds gathered under a big tent behind the hospital.

The Acute Care Manager, Nicole Karol says it's a fantastic new space with the patients care top of mind.

She says they took an idea from Canmore to give patients undergoing chemo a connection to the outdoors.

"What we noticed out there was they had all their treatment chairs facing out their windows and that was instantly something that we realized that we should be doing here because it's just makes it so much more relaxing and calming," she says. The windows are all tinted so you can't see in but we can see out so it's private."

Karol says the new centre is bigger, it's equipped with heated chairs for patients and has other amenities like its own ice machine for those patients that need to drink a lot of water during their treatments and their own washroom. In the past they had to share with the low risk obstetrics clinic which Karol says wasn't the best for patients undergoing chemo.

She says there are offices that can be turned into patient care rooms in the future if the need arises.