Projected demand drives a boom in cancer care sites

Massachusetts hospitals plan to build a significant number of new cancer treatment facilities over the next few years, especially in the suburbs, to prepare for what doctors expect will be a surge in patients.

Executives at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and at Brigham and Women's Hospital said they plan to open cancer centers in Milford, in partnership with Milford Regional Medical Center, and in Weymouth, with South Shore Hospital.

Also, last week seven hospitals and two physicians filed plans with the state to open radiation oncology centers in Dorchester, Fairhaven, Dartmouth, Milford, Everett, Haverhill, Mashpee, and Newton, following a state report that predicted a shortage of such facilities by 2010. Public health officials said they expected more applications.

The Department of Public Health estimates the number of cancer patients will grow to 38,248 by the end of the decade, up from 32,339 in 2000. This summer, it adopted new guidelines allowing more hospitals to buy linear accelerators, which provide the radiation treatment needed by about half of all cancer patients. The department must approve applications for radiation treatment facilities based partly on whether patients in a hospital's service area wait too long or travel too far for treatment.

Officials say the graying of the population is driving the need for facilities. Those born during the baby boom are nearing 60, an age when cancer is more common. People in their early 60s are six times more likely to get cancer than those 20 years younger.

In applications to build radiation facilities, executives noted that the population is shifting to the suburbs and beyond. Yet half of the state's 60 radiation oncology units are in Boston. Traveling for radiation therapy is particularly onerous, because patients often face treatment daily for weeks.

Cost of the facilities would range from a $5.7 million project in Haverhill, proposed by Dr. Howard Gardner and Dr. Peter Grillo, to a $13.2 million radiation center that Massachusetts General Hospital wants to build at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

Executives at Southcoast Health System, which includes the hospitals of Charlton in Fall River, St. Luke's in New Bedford, and Tobey in Wareham, said that the area's population is growing 3 percent annually. The incidence of cancer in the region is 9.2 percent above the statewide average, and as much as 23.4 percent higher in some communities, said Ellen Banach, vice president for strategic services.

The hospital network is seeking approval to build a $7.5-million radiation treatment facility in Fairhaven, off Route 195.

``We know patients are waiting longer than the state believes is reasonable to start their radiation treatments," Banach said. ``And the units . . . in the region are older."

Public health guidelines recommend patients start their treatment within seven days of their initial consultation with a radiation oncologist, but Banach said many patients are waiting two weeks or even longer.

Dr. Lawrence Shulman, chief medical officer at Dana-Farber, said his hospital and the Brigham are opening cancer centers in the suburbs both because the Boston teaching hospitals are so crowded and because patients are demanding easier access to top-level care.

``It's a customer service issue," he said. ``Patients come in here grinding their molars because of how difficult it is to get in here."