Continuing coverage
This newspaper has followed the details of plans for area proton therapy centers, covering every move in multiple stories, since plans were first presented in 2009.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has plans to build a proton beam therapy center for radiation treatments for cancer, throwing into question the status of plans to build two multi-million dollar Dayton-area proton centers.
Plans for a Cincinnati proton center would run within 50 miles of any proposed sites in the Dayton market.
No formal announcement has been made, but Cincinnati Children’s spokesman Terry Loftus told this newspaper that a proton center is in the works. Cincinnati Children’s is discussing a possible partnership on the proton center with Cincinnati health system UC Health, affiliated with the University of Cincinnati, Loftus said.
The board of trustees of Cincinnati Children’s approved Tuesday a plan to invest in proton therapy services, Loftus said. Details about location, timing and financing are still being worked out. There are also discussions with suppliers and a potential equipment vendor, but no contracts have been signed, Loftus said.
“At this point, I can confirm that we are planning to build a proton therapy facility, but a lot of the details are yet to be worked out,” he said.
“One of the great benefits of proton therapy is in the treatment of pediatric cancers. With proton therapy, you can more precisely target the therapy directly to a tumor avoiding radiation exposure to surrounding, healthy tissue. This is particularly important with children,” Loftus said.
Meanwhile, two proton centers planned for the Dayton market have made no visible progress.
Proton beam therapy is a radiation treatment delivering a larger but more precise dosage to a tumor than traditional X-ray treatments. It minimizes damage to surrounding issue, used to treat cancers of the brain, head, neck, eyes, prostate, lungs, early breast cancer and pediatric cancers.
In 2009, California-based Optivus Proton Therapy Inc. and Miami Twp. announced plans to build a $170 million proton center at the Austin Landing development, on more than 30 acres in the southwest quadrant of the Austin Boulevard-Interstate 75 interchange.
A year later, Dayton system Premier Health said it was in talks to partner with Optivus on the project.
As things went on, Optivus developed plans that included a headquarters, research and production operation, as well as the proton center in Miami Twp. The plans were put on hold in 2011.
However, a company related to Optivus still has options on the land.
An agreement giving Clivus Development LLC options on township-owned land for the proton center has been extended twice. Most recently, Miami Twp. trustees voted Tuesday to extend Clivus Development’s options on the land another six months to the end of 2013. The options were due to expire at the end of this month.
Optivus did not return requests for comment.
Diane Ewing, spokeswoman for Premier Health, said, “We continue to monitor and assess the technology, but have nothing new to report.”
Independent oncology practice Dayton Physicians Network was also partnering with Optivus.
“It’s on hold until there’s more clarification about the future of reimbursement, and some of the clinical studies going on. Plus I think there’s been a lot of concern going on about health care reform,” said Robert Baird, chief executive officer of Dayton Physicians.
“There’s a lot of discussion about is proton therapy really more clinically effective than current therapies out on the market,” Baird said. “That’s why I don’t think there’s been any push to further develop either proton center.”
Kettering Health Network announced May 2010 plans to build an approximately $80 million proton center, either next to Kettering Medical Center or also at Austin Landing. Construction has not moved forward since then.
“It all boils down to money,” Leonard Arzt, executive director of The National Association for Proton Therapy, said. “If they had the funding, Kettering and Optivus probably would have been built by now.”
At the time Kettering Health and Optivus first made their announcements, there were eight proton therapy centers nationwide. Now there are 11, with two more opening in the fall, one in Michigan and one in California, Arzt said. The next closest one to the Cincinnati-Dayton region is in Bloomington, Ind.
Experts say proton therapy technology is also rapidly changing, which could affect the Dayton- area projects.
“Kettering Health Network continues to evaluate funding options for proton therapy treatment. The technology, though, is evolving at a rapid pace and improvements are being made on the size and scope of the installation. We are making a deliberate assessment on those advancements,” said Lori Turner, vice president of marketing for Kettering Health, in a statement.
Talks surfaced in 2008 in Columbus for similar proton center deals, but those are off the table for now.
“The discussion at the time was the four health systems in Franklin County … collaboratively building a joint freestanding proton center” because “these were really expensive technologies to build,” said Jeff Klingler, president and chief executive officer of Central Ohio Hospital Council.
The discussions involved Ohio State University, Mount Carmel Health System, Ohio Health Corp. and Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The end recommendation to the Columbus system CEOs was not to move forward for several reasons, Klingler said.
Physician staffing for a facility owned by four health systems was a problem. And the future of the reimbursements was in doubt, he said.
In the end, it made more sense for a proton center to be attached to one of the systems, not four.
“While we were investigating doing this joint facility, the technology itself changed. The technology changed so where the proton centers were maybe a quarter of the size and maybe a quarter of the cost,” Klingler said.
It now looks like Ohio’s first proton beam center will open in Cleveland. University Hospitals breaks ground this summer, said spokeswoman Alicia Reale Cooney.
A new $30 million building will be constructed on the campus of University Hospitals Case Medical Center, affiliated with Case Western Reserve University. Construction should finish by the second quarter of 2015, Cooney said.
University Hospitals is buying equipment from Mevion Medical Systems, which developed new proton technology equipment that is more compact and less expensive.
“While conventional proton beam systems require massive equipment and cost up to $120 million to implement, scientific breakthroughs by (Mevion), located in Littleton, Mass, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have led to the development of this first-of-its-kind more compact and less costly model that provides the latest proton therapy delivery system in a single vault (one-room) installation,” reads University Hospitals’ 2011 release on the project.
Rough estimates are for the Cleveland center to treat 300 patients a year by the third year of operations, Cooney said.
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