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Official Town Site
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General News: Cancer Center to Open in September
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| The cancer treatment center in Cornwall is nearing completion. |
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| Hospital officials Robert Ross, Sue Sullivan and Judi Stokes outside the new cancer center. |
July 13, 2009
When the new cancer tratment center at St. Luke’s Cornwall hospital opens in September, hospital vice-president Sue Sullivan hopes that cancer patients will find not only state-of-the-art medical care but also a sense of community and the support they need to navigate the long process of fighting the disease.
“We’ve worked very hard to create a sense of community at the center,” Sullivan said as she began a tour of the new facility last week. Robert Ross, the hospital’s senior vice president in charge of operations who joined the tour, praised the team of contractors and builders for bringing the $17 million project in “ahead of schedule and under budget.”
Radiation Oncology Unit Opens First
The facility will open in phases, starting with the core radiation oncology treatment area on the first floor of the new building at the Cornwall campus of the hospital. In the spring of 2010 the new infusion treatment area will be operating 10 chairs and two private beds where patients will receive their regular chemotherapy treatment. That service will be located in the original hospital building where the mental health unit was located until it was closed this spring.
Phase three of the cancer treatment center’s development will be located on the first floor of the original hospital, which Sue Sullivan says will be transformed into the Gathering Place, where support groups will meet, where patients can read about new treatments, and where yoga, massage and acupuncture will be offered to cancer patients. The Gathering Place, Sullivan says, is an example of the focus on integrated patient services that will be a cornerstone of the new center.
Focus on Support for the Patient
To achieve this new level of understanding of individual needs of cancer patients the hospital has integrated cancer survivors in key roles. Renee Feenaghty, a leukemia survivor, will be the administrative director of the cancer center and Sullivan says she is passionate about the center’s services and its focus on the family. Cancer survivors will also be among the volunteers who help patients navigate the maze of services available at the center. Jewish Family Services will offer support for patients at home, like grocery shopping or housekeeping, or provide transportation to the center.
When patients first arrive at the radiation oncology center for treatment, they will be given a CT scan to pinpoint tumors and to assist doctors in developing their treatment plan. A state-of-the-art TomoTherapy radiation unit and a secondary radiation unit will offer precision targeting of cancer cells. Dr. Patricia Han, a radiation oncologist, will be in charge of the center, whose staff includes a breast surgeon, a thoracic surgeon and two breast reconstruction specialists. Consultations with other specialists will be held in a special meeting room and patients may be included in clinical trials run by doctors at Mount Sinai hospital.
Hospital Shifts from Inpatient to Outpatient Services
The new cancer care center is part of a private joint venture between St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital and Dr. Michel Wesson, a physician who operates several cancer care centers in the New York metro area. The center is part of the move away from inpatient care at the Cornwall branch of the hospital where, in addition to the outpatient cancer care center, the hospital has added an ambulatory care center for same day surgery, a pain management unit and a wound care center that includes three hyperbaric chambers that speed healing.
As part of the change in inpatient services, plans are in motion to eliminate half the patient beds in Cornwall at the end of this month, including those currently in the intensive care unit. This move has concerned some Cornwall residents and the town board intends to let the hospital know it is unhappy with the move.
Sue Sullivan explains that the hospital is following the requirements of a state panel that seeks to eliminate duplication of services, in this case those that are provided by the Newburgh branch of the hospital just five miles away. She also says that intensive care has been redefined with new medical technology that allows any bed to be attached to monitoring equipment that tracks a patient’s status constantly. Once a patient arrives at the hospital seeking medical care, Sullivan says, emergency room and staff physicians will determine what level of care is needed, whether onsite in Cornwall, in Newburgh, or even at the trauma center at Westchester Medical.
Cancer Center Will Offer Range of Services
The cancer care treatment center will be a centerpiece of this new focus on outpatient services and when it is completed by the end of 2010, it will include additional services from a gynecologist-oncologist to a genetics counselor and prosthetics specialist.
Outpatients and visitors to the hospital will be able to have meals in a renovated dining room or rest in a healing garden that will be installed nearby. Healing, after all, is what the creators of the cancer center hope to achieve with the new project and, based on what hospital executives have planned, patients will have access to the best treatment in the area to realize this goal.
Comments:
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yoga, massage, and acupuncture. yeah , go ahead and see if you can get your insurance to cover those very vital items. if the insurance industry would 'allow' preventative medicine and health care we wouldn't need all this high tech treatment that is out of most folks' economic range. hey, here's an idea, let's dump that crap-load of money into the two existing hospitals and develop a clinic for those who have no insurance at all...
posted by Kate Benson on 07/13/09 at 10:29 PM
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