When St. Mary's Janesville Hospital in Rock County, Wisconsin, opened in early 2012 it did not offer radiation therapy to cancer patients, although such a service was always in the hospital’s plans.

Last week, hospital officials announced it is breaking ground on a $10 million radiation oncology facility that will be built, staffed, and operational by August 2016.

The expansion will allow for a single-story, 8,750-square-foot area at the hospital's Dean Clinic on the campus's southwest side (where cancer patients now receive chemotherapy and surgical oncology). It will house new computer imaging equipment and the state-of-the-art, 26,000-pound linear accelerator — which is designed, as hospital officials said, “to administer radiation therapy to cancer patients with pinpoint accuracy.”
“A cancer diagnosis is tough enough and the last thing you want to have to do is go to multiple facilities for treatment,” Eric Thornton, vice president of operations at the hospital, who is also the project manager overseeing the expansion, told HCB News.

“St. Mary’s Janesville Hospital has always treated a number of patients who have had to be referred for radiation oncology and we understood they preferred to receive treatment closer to home. So expansion to include radiation oncology services is part of our ongoing commitment to provide complete cancer care in our community," he continued.

Thornton said that St. Mary’s wanted to offer what they believed to be the most effective treatment possible to complete their existing array of cancer services, and considered Varian Medical System's TrueBeam linac to be the “cutting edge” in radiation oncology care.

Thornton anticipates that St. Mary’s new radiation oncology unit will be able to provide treatment for 20 to 25 patients per day. In fact, the building expansion includes extra space to add a second TrueBeam linear accelerator should cancer treatment demands in the area increase.

“We believe the capabilities of a single linear accelerator will provide ample services for our patients now and in the immediate future,” said Thornton, “but if patient demand necessitates expansion of these services, we will be well prepared to pursue additional equipment.”

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