By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Metro Health
launched its radiation oncology services last autumn, and, since then,
the service has attracted twice the number of patients the hospital
expected to serve in its first 12 months. That generated the need for a
second radiation oncologist to expand services for patients.
Terri Bott-Kothari, M.D., a former
investigator in radiation oncology for the children's oncology group at
Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, joined the Cancer Care Center at Metro Health Village last week.
The new position is a dual appointment to the cancer center, 5950 Metro Way, Wyoming and the University of Michigan Department of Radiation Oncology.
"This is a joint venture with U of M,"
says Brian Jepson, CIO. "Radiation oncologists are credentialed through
both. When patients come for cancer care and radiation therapy, there's
video conferencing between Metro physicians and U of M physicians, so
our patients receive care from the University of Michigan health
system. We have the same equipment here, the same clinical protocols.
Before we offered this service, some patients were actually travelling
to Ann Arbor on a daily basis over six to eight weeks for treatment."
Jepson says the addition of Dr.
Bott-Kothari enables the cancer center to handle the current 30 to 35
radiation oncology patients, and will help meet increased demand going
forward.
"When we're starting to treat 40
patients in the treatment program we'll have to start thinking about
adding a second unit, adding a second linear accelerator," Jepson says.
The Metro Health radiation oncology
program is part of a statewide radiation oncology network. If there's a
need to grow, the hospital can tap radiation oncologists from other
health care systems to cover the increased need until new physicians
are in place.
"We're staying ahead of the growth," he says, "so there's no access issue as far as being treated here at Metro."
Source: Brian Jepson, Metro Health; Mary Ann Sabo, Sabo Public Relations
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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