Everyone who drives Donner Pass Road has seen it go up piece by piece — the two-storied, 34,000 square-foot, $32.6 million Tahoe Forest Cancer Center. After nearly two years of construction, the cancer center and its millions of dollars in cutting-edge radiation oncology technology will open to the public in July.
The Tahoe Forest Cancer Center building— funded mostly by the taxpayer-supported, $98.5 million Measure C bond passed in September 2007 — will bring cutting-edge radiation oncology services to the Tahoe Forest Hospital, according to hospital officials. The Tahoe Forest Cancer Center has operated across the street from the main hospital building since 2006, and has been diagnosing and treating cancer cases for the past six years, although it has been limited by its lack of radiation equipment. Cancer patients have had to travel to hospitals in Reno or the Sacramento area to get radiation treatment.
The Technology
The move into radiation oncology came with a significant investment. Between the Varian True Beam linear accelerator and the PET CT machine, the district invested millions of dollars into radiation and diagnostic technology.
“When we made a decision to buy radiation oncology equipment, we wanted to buy tomorrow’s machine, not yesterday’s machine,” said Tahoe Forest Cancer Center Medical Director Dr. Larry Heifetz.
The radiation machine’s precision allows it to target malignant tumors without affecting surrounding tissue. That pinpoint accuracy enables doctors to treat tumors with radiation rather than surgery, and the True Beam’s efficiency shortens treatments substantially.
“This technology is truly state of the art,” said Heifetz
The Tahoe Forest Cancer Center medical staff will diagnose and treat all types of the disease expect for pediatric cancer cases.
“Currently there are no malignancies that we don’t take care of,” said Heifetz.
But, just like national averages, 80 percent of the cancer cases the center sees are the four most prevalent cancers — breast, lung, prostate, and colorectal.
The Tahoe Forest Cancer Center is part of the UC Davis Cancer Care Network, and doctors have developed a secure conference room with teleconferencing technology that allows specialists and oncologists throughout the UC Davis network to discuss difficult cases. The Virtual Tumor Board, as the conference is called, allows a patient’s case to be reviewed by several of the region’s leading oncologists.
The Building
While the Tahoe Forest Cancer Center building is two stories and 34,000 square feet, only 20,000 square feet will be occupied immediately. The second floor and its 14,000 square feet of space will remain unfinished and available for future cancer center expansion.
“When we planned the building it did not make sense, because of the limited land we have for hospital expansion, to build a one-story building,” said Rick McConn, the hospital’s chief of facilities development.
McConn said the building was designed “from the inside out.” The function and flow of the oncology services in the interior of the structure determined the building’s layout.
A lot of care was taken to create a certain look and feel in the interior of the building. The building is filled with art, flat screen TVs, massage chairs, fireplaces — items you don’t typically associate with a hospital.
“A lot of the hospitals today, the primary design feature is to not make them feel like a hospital,” said McConn. “If you can make the patients feel better, they are going to get better.”
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The Money
The cancer center was built with $28.6 million in Measure C funding, almost one-third of the $95 million bond money slated for hospital facilities. The bond measure is also funding upgrades to the emergency department and long-term care, and seismic upgrades to hospital facilities and women and family medicine.
The new cancer center is projected to bring significant revenue into the hospital district. Net revenue for the new center’s first year of operation is projected to be $8.6 million while its operating expenses will be around $6.5 million, meaning the center will make the hospital district an estimated $2.1 million in its first year.
The construction of the Tahoe Forest Cancer Center and the projected revenue both mirror national trends. There has been a boom in cancer center construction across the nation as hospitals and for-profit cancer centers build new facilities to meet the growing need for cancer care. That need is driven in part by the aging Baby Boomer generation — the 75 million people born post World War II between 1946 and 1964. In a 2011 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, upper-end projections say U.S. cancer care costs could skyrocket by 66 percent by 2020, going from the $125 billion spent on U.S. cancer care in 2010 to $207 billion in 2020, because of the increased incidence of cancer and the increase in cancer care costs.
The economics of cancer care are also fueling the cancer center growth. Cancer care, unlike other parts of hospital operations like emergency care, is highly profitable. Cancer patients are generally older, and therefore have a higher probability of having their cancer treatment reimbursed by Medicare or by health insurance plans. And unlike other medical services, cancer treatment is a process that involves repeated and recurrent treatments. Patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation treatments are often admitted to a hospital daily, and even after active treatment, cancer patients return regularly for checkups or follow-up treatment.
The growing need for cancer care and its profitability has led to an increase in both hospital-based cancer centers and for-profit cancer centers across the nation. According to a February 2011 article in Healthcare Construction and Operations “most healthcare systems are scrambling to add cancer care services to their repertoire, either by building new cancer centers on existing hospital campuses or expanding treatment facilities.”
The Patients
When the hospital district opened the cancer center in its temporary location in 2006, they expected 100 new patients per year, said Heifetz. That number quickly grew beyond projections to 300 new patients per year.
The hospital district, in projecting who would use the Tahoe Forest Cancer Center, developed a service area that included Truckee, North Tahoe, Sierra County, and even Plumas County, an area where the drive to Reno’s Renown Regional Medical Center is nearly equal, depending on weather conditions.
The district estimates that 2,100 people within the cancer center’s service area have cancer, and 300 new cancer patients will be diagnosed each year. By 2018, Tahoe Forest Hospital expects 1,995 cancer patients to be using the services of Tahoe Forest Cancer Center each year.
But along with the Truckee, North Tahoe, and Sierra County patients, the center currently sees patients from as far away as South Lake Tahoe, Carson City, and Reno, said Dr. Heifetz.
Heifetz said Tahoe Forest Cancer Center’s affiliation with the UC Davis Cancer Center — one of only 41 cancer centers in the nation to receive a prestigious “comprehensive” designation from the National Cancer Institute — and the Virtual Tumor Board that connects UC Davis experts to Tahoe Forest doctors, is one of the reasons people from out of the area are choosing to receive care in Truckee.
The cancer center will celebrate the new building’s completion on July 17 with a grand opening for donors. A community open house and grand opening celebration will follow on July 21.
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