Doctors say cancer center will mean less travel, better care

David Wenner, The (Harrisburg) Patriot-News

Amy Stitzel was diagnosed with leukemia around Christmas 2002. She was pregnant with her first child.

Thus began three years of exhaustion, worry and countless medical appointments.

She got sick in North Carolina and spent three weeks in the hospital at Wake Forest University. Back home in Lititz, she decided to continue treatment at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. She got better, had a healthy baby, and is happy with the care she received at Hershey.

Yet it wasn’t without many annoyances.

Doctors, treatments and tests were scattered about the medical center. She once had to scramble to find a place to vomit while walking to a destination.

Sometimes every waiting room chair was taken. Sometimes she waited two hours for chemotherapy.

Yet she realizes it could have been worse: She could have had to drive to Baltimore, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh — as some local patients do when faced with rare or treatment-resistant cancers.

Hershey doctors acknowledged all of those problems.

And they said they will cure most if not all of them when they open the $153 million Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute on July 13.

The four-story building will be staffed with 200 doctors, nurses and others devoted to caring for cancer patients. It also will house about 165 researchers working on ways to cure and prevent cancer.

The new building, and the people and equipment within, will virtually eliminate the need for local cancer patients to leave the area for treatment, Hershey leaders said. Only the rarest of cancers will require traveling to a distant facility, they said.

“I’ve visited a lot of institutions. I can tell you this is just a gorgeous facility,” said Dr. Harold Paz, the CEO and medical school dean at Hershey. “People here in central Pennsylvania really deserve a facility like this.”

For cancer patients, the most immediate benefit is having everything they need in one place.

Hershey doctors said the institute will guarantee that patients receive multiple opinions and are offered the best treatment approaches for their particular cases.

They laid out a basic scenario: A patient contacts the cancer institute. Within days, the patient meets with a team of specialists in his or her type of cancer. There are 11 teams.

Later, the patient’s case is discussed during the regular meetings at which the cancer teams review all their cases.

These meetings will involve intense discussions, even arguments, about the treatment plan for each patient, the doctors said.

“We will challenge our colleagues. You say you want to do X. What is the data? Why not Y?” said Dr. Henry Wagner, a radiation oncologist.

The other major purpose of the new building is to qualify as a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center.

The designation is available to institutions that combine leading-edge cancer treatment with a deep commitment to cancer research.

It was created by Congress in the early 1970s with the goal of making the most advanced cancer treatments available to people in all parts of the country.

There are 63 NCI-designated cancer centers. Pennsylvania has five, with four in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh. There are several in the Baltimore area.

Hershey has spent much of the past decade pulling together the needed staff and components. The new building is expected to provide one of the final ingredients.

About half the space, including most of the top two floors, will be occupied by labs filled with cancer researchers.

According to Dr. Kevin O’Carroll, a surgical oncologist at Hershey, a persistent problem in medicine is that doctors treating patients and those studying disease occupy separate “silos.”

The new institute is designed to eliminate silos and promote close collaboration.

For patients, an expected benefit is quicker access to the latest fruits of cancer research, including experimental treatments and drugs.

About six years ago, the medical center recruited Dr. Thomas Loughran Jr. to lead the drive for the NCI designation.

Loughran, who specializes in blood cancers such as leukemia, had helped win an NCI designation for the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer and Research Institute in Florida.

Gearing up for the NCI application, Hershey has recruited several nationally prominent cancer doctors and researchers, said Loughran, the institute’s director.

He said the NCI designation would add to Hershey’s ability to attract top-flight staff.

It would lead to millions of dollars from the NCI.

It would give local patients increased access to clinical trials and experimental drugs.

Loughran expects the final application will be filed next spring. The NCI designation could come by mid-2011.

The cancer institute will occupy a premier place on the Hershey campus, with its entrance providing a new main entrance to the medical center.

The middle of the cancer center is open. Light streams through a glass-paneled ceiling.

Standing at a railing on the top floor, you can peer all the way down to an underground floor, where people undergo radiation treatment.

One of the goals is to allow natural light to flow down to those radiation patients, with the hope that it will brighten one of the more taxing aspects of cancer treatment.

Outside is a “healing garden,” another element designed to add some beauty and tranquillity to the often depressing ordeal of cancer treatment.