Neighborhood cancer care

January 15, 2012|By John Dyer

On a recent visit to the Joan and James Vernon Cancer Center at Newton-Wellesley… (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)

Cancer treatment centers with links to the most prestigious hospitals in the state are springing up in suburban communities, a trend that experts say will allow area residents to receive top-notch care close to home at a time when more people face a greater chance of developing the disease.

On Thursday, UMass Memorial Health Care is scheduled to hold a groundbreaking ceremony for its $12.7 million Cancer Pavilion at Marlborough Hospital.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center plans to open a state-of-the-art $20 million cancer center in Needham in spring 2014. Those facilities are in addition to Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s $32 million Joan and James Vernon Cancer Center, which opened two years ago in affiliation with Massachusetts General Hospital, and the $25 million Dana-Farber/ Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center at Milford Regional Medical Center, established in 2008.

Also, the MetroWest Cancer Care Center in Framingham has been operating since 1987, and doctors at Children’s Hospital Boston at Waltham also treat cancer patients.

The proliferation of suburban cancer treatment centers reflects a new model of medical care, in which patients visit satellite offices near their homes for daily therapies, like radiation infusions, and cut down on trips to their hospital’s main campus in Boston or Worcester, authorities say. ‘

‘They’ll get their ongoing treatment at their community hospital, and then every several months they’ll go into the city and see a specialist,’’ said Randy Schwartz, senior vice president for Strategic Health Initiatives at the New England Division of the American Cancer Society. ‘‘Treatment is more ambulatory.’’

Bringing the care closer to patients makes sense medically, according to health care professionals, who cite the physical and psychological rigors that cancer treatments can involve.

Keeping transportation time to a minimum greatly improves the quality of life for patients as they combat the disease, doctors said.

‘‘Imagine sitting here in Dana- Farber for four hours getting chemotherapy and feeling pretty miserable when you leave, and then being stuck in traffic on Brookline Avenue or the Mass. Pike,’’ said Dr. Lawrence Shulman, chief medical officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. ‘‘It doesn’t make sense.’’

Needham resident Carol Bolton Kappel, who recently finished radiation and chemotherapy treatments after being diagnosed with breast cancer, said she chose to use Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham for much of her treatment precisely because she couldn’t bear driving into the city.