Preparing to meet an expected growth in demand, Massachusetts providers are setting plans to build a large number of cancer centers, following population growth out of the Boston metro and into the further-flung suburbs. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital are opening cancer centers in partnership with hospitals in the outer suburbs of Boston. Also, on the heels of a state report predicting a cancer treatment shortage by the year 2010, seven hospitals and two physicians have filed plans to build radiation oncology centers. The state must approve these plans before the applicants can move ahead, after determining whether patients in the proposed facilities are currently waiting too long for treatment or driving too far to get that treatment, but the odds are good that at least some will be approved; right now, half of the state's radiation oncology treatment centers are in Boston.
Learn more about the MA cancer treatment boom:
- read this article from The Boston Globe