City to get cancer treatment center - Private practice proton therapy site to be first in U.S

A high-tech proton therapy cancer treatment center will be available in Oklahoma City in 2009, when a $95 million facility will open.

The project will be announced today.

Doctors from two Oklahoma City radiation oncology practices have teamed with an Indiana-based company, officials said.

Seven physicians associated with Radiation Medicine Associates and Radiation Oncology Associates, both of Oklahoma City, are partnering with ProCure Treatment Centers Inc. to build the first private practice proton therapy center in the United States here.

Location of the 55,000-square-foot facility has not been selected, said Hadley Ford, chief executive officer of the Bloomington, Ind.-based company.

"We hope to have a shovel in the ground in March," Ford said. "We'll see our first patient in the second quarter of 2009."

ProCure was founded in 2005 by Dr. John Cameron, a particle physics researcher at Indiana University. He played a key role in the creation of one of the nation's first proton therapy treatment facilities, the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute in Bloomington.

Cameron is expected to attend a 2:30 p.m. announcement about the ProCure Treatment Center today at the Presbyterian Health Foundation Research Park.

The new center, one of only six proton therapy centers in the United States, will treat up to 1,500 patients annually, Ford said.

Oklahoma's involvement in the center began with an e-mail from one of its eventual physician partners, Dr. William C. Goad, who is a founder of Radiation Medical Associates in 2001 with Dr. John Taylor.

Goad was searching for better ways to treat cancer patients when he read some information about ProCure Treatment Centers and e-mailed its chief executive.

A quick response led to a meeting at a national conference last year and eventually to today's planned announcement.

"Never in my life or in my training program did I think I would have the opportunity to work with protons," Goad said. "When we treat now we expose a lot of tissue to radiation. With protons, because of their unique physical characteristics, you limit that dose tremendously."

Goad said physicians at both Radiation Medicine Associates and Radiation Oncology Associates expect to continue their practices and retain contracts with local hospitals.

"We see this as complementary to our practice," he said. "Protons are going to be very, very significant in terms of providing better patient care."

Michael Anderson, president of the Presbyterian Health Foundation, said the new center will bring access to the high-tech cancer treatment to thousands in Oklahoma and beyond to whom it otherwise would not be available.

"Proton therapy for cancer treatment has been centered in several of the world's elite medical centers -- Harvard's Mass General Hospital, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the University of Pennsylvania Health System," Anderson said.

"A center in Oklahoma City would be helpful to a large, underserved market area of a six-state region that has over 175,000 cancer cases per year and as many as 250,000 (overall) 'suitable-for-proton-therapy-treatment,' according to experts."Oklahoma City will become the first proton therapy center built by ProCure Treatment Centers, although Ford said the company plans to build two to three centers a year.

Challenges to building the proton business include both financing and availability of the high-tech equipment, Ford said. The machine that creates the proton beam costs about $50 million and takes a lot of time to build, he said.

"Our model is the doctors take care of the medicine and we take care of the business," Ford said. "They put their money in and we put our money in, and they take care of clinical decisions and we take care of the back office stuff like building the building and designing the machine and getting it up and running."

The Oklahoma City deal is fully financed, Ford said.

When completed, the Oklahoma City proton therapy center will create 100 full-time jobs with average salaries of more than $100,000, the officials said.

The Oklahoma City ProCure Treatment Center will employ physicists, engineers, dosimitrists, radiation therapists and nurses. The company is building a training center in Indiana.

Goad said the Oklahoma City proton treatment center would be "complementary" to the new cancer research center under construction at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

"It's another tool in the toolbox for the oncologist to use to make sure the patient has access to the right technology and the right treatment," said Chris Chandler, senior vice president of marketing for ProCure.

"Even though proton radiation may cost marginally more than standard radiation and less than surgery, the fact that you drastically reduce the side effects and the complications provides a much higher quality of life to the patient," Ford said. "It's hard to put a dollar figure on that."