Starting this summer, Cooley Dickinson Hospital will begin construction on a $5 million cancer center.
The new Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton will be completed in the summer of 2015. It will be constructed over the current radiation therapy department, located in their North Building on Locust Street.
This expansion of services between the Mass General Cancer Center and Cooley Dickinson Hospital is the first local clinical service to be strengthened by Cooley Dickinson’s relationship with Massachusetts General Hospital.
Mass General Hospital will be directing the new center in Northampton, and the changes to transform the cancer treatment at Cooley Dickinson will be set in motion without yet having a physical building.
The physicians currently working at Cooley Dickinson will become Mass General doctors this summer. In order to do this, they must apply for privileges at Mass General, as well as go through an extensive review process. These physicians will then be treated as if they work at Mass General in Boston, but are stationed at Northampton.
Dianne Cutillo, senior director of public affairs at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, expects that some Mass General specialists will be sent to work at the new cancer center. However, the details are still being worked out.
Cooley Dickinson provides its own cancer care. Since 1978, its care has been accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer. It provides treatment that includes chemotherapy, radiation therapy and oncology surgery, such as the removal of tumors. It also includes prevention, early detection, screening, diagnosis and support for patients and families.
The new cancer center will still use these forms of treatment, with slightly different protocols. New services will include access to clinical trials at Mass General Cancer Center, implementation of Mass General Cancer Center’s multidisciplinary care model, an increased number of Mass General Cancer Center-modeled chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatment protocols and access to Mass General Cancer Center-led genetic screening and counseling.
“A patient might see three different doctors at once, a medical, surgical, and radiation doctor. But here (in Northampton) they will all be in one location,” Cutillo said, commenting on the expected effectiveness of the multidisciplinary model.
Patients will be also able to receive spiritual and mental therapy along with physical treatment at the new cancer center.
“One of the things that is required to become a Mass General Cancer Center is to provide these things,” Cutillo said.
The nearest cancer centers are in Springfield, Pittsfield and Boston.
The commutes to those places can be difficult for individuals and families to make whenever they need to get treatment, so a center in Northampton would bring treatment much closer to those in the Pioneer Valley.
With Northampton’s new cancer center, patients would be saved from the inconvenience of a long drive to treatment and they would still be able to work and continue their normal daily routine while receiving treatment.
Cooley Dickinson admits about 6,000 patients and treats about 40,000 emergency patients per year. With the formation of the Mass General Cancer Center, Cooley Dickinson is unsure of how many more patients it will treat.
Massachusetts General Hospital is the largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. It services over 48,000 inpatients as well as 1.5 million outpatient programs at its main campus. Its cancer centers are only located in a handful of locations around the state of Massachusetts.
Katherine Gilligan can be reached at [email protected].
