FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
April 28, 2000

CONTACT: Stacey Beene
Mercy Hospital, Merced
(209) 384-6528
Pager: (209) 724-1521

Laurie Slothower
UC Davis Health System
(916)734-9023
pager: (916) 762-9855

MERCY, UC DAVIS HOST CANCER CENTER OPEN HOUSE ON MAY 8

(MERCED, Calif) - The new Mercy Cancer Center, an affiliate of the UC Davis Cancer Network, will have its open house at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, May 8. The center is located behind 3850 G Street (G Street at Cormorant Drive) in Merced.

Official ceremonies include a 6 p.m. ribbon cutting and blessing. Following the program, tours -- including a telemedicine demonstration -- will be available.

The 13,500-square-foot facility is equipped with state-of-the art radiation oncology and telemedicine equipment, conference rooms for patient education and a cancer resource education center. Outpatient chemotherapy and radiation therapy as well as services for cancer prevention, screening and education will now be available in one location. Patients can be seen at the new site beginning in June.

The center is the result of a joint venture between Mercy Hospital and Health Services and the UC Davis Health System. Under the arrangement, cancer patients will be cared for by their primary care physicians and oncologists, but will have local access to clinical trials, advanced radiation oncology services and consultations with UC Davis faculty physicians. Prior to the opening of this center, local residents had to drive more than 100 miles to receive these kind of services.

"The Mercy Cancer Center connects the medical community of Merced with the medical community of UC Davis," said John Headding, chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital and Health Services/Catholic Healthcare West. "With the new technology our facility offers, we can access the research and specialists that the UC Davis Cancer Center has to offer while providing better care to Merced residents with cancer."

"This unique affiliation gives us an opportunity to extend the ability of our cancer program to help people in outlying areas," added Bob Chason, chief operating officer for UC Davis Medical Center. "The UC Davis Medical Center and School of Medicine have a longstanding commitment to improving access to health care to the residents of Northern California. Developing a cancer center in Merced supports these goals."

Construction and equipment costs of the new building are estimated at $6.8 million. The Mercy Hospital Foundation has raised $730,000 of a $1 million capitol campaign toward that cost, including $60,000 donated by Mercy Hospital Volunteers. Part of their donation funded the fountain at the garden entrance to the new facility. State-of-the-art technology is a cornerstone of services now available at the center. A new high-energy, dual-photon linear accelerator and simulation equipment will help radiation therapists plan more precisely the exact dose of radiation required to kill the tumor while sparing healthy tissue. Three-dimensional treatment planning computers improve their ability to target cancer margins, a layer of cells surrounding the tumor that must be destroyed for cancer to be successfully treated.

Telemedicine, another important new service, will give Mercy physicians access to UC Davis tumor board meetings, grand rounds and other educational events. It will allow them to consult with UC Davis faculty on patient care issues or have UC Davis oncology specialists examine patients. The technology uses high-speed digital lines to transmit medical data as well as video and audio for long-distance consultations. UC Davis' Telemedicine program has been named among the 10 best telemedicine programs in the nation for the past two years.

"Our regional outreach strategy has been to bring health care expertise out to communities and to work in collaboration with local physicians, nurses, social workers and other health-care professionals in managing patient care," said Thomas S. Nesbitt, M.D., assistant dean for UC Davis Regional Outreach and Telehealth programs.

"Patients will now be eligible for participation in drug trials and new treatment regimens that are often not available in smaller communities like Merced. In addition, community physicians will have access to continuing medical education regarding the latest advances in cancer care."

"This is very much a partnership," agreed John Earle, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology. "Working with local physicians and other health-care providers in Merced, we believe we can develop a new model for delivering cancer care in communities that do not have a teaching hospital."

Mercy Hospital is the latest of more than 30 hospitals in Northern and Central California that have telemedicine links to UC Davis, although the Merced site is the first to focus exclusively on cancer care. A second collaborative cancer center in Yuba City/ Marysville is scheduled to open in August.

The Merced cancer center was designed by the San Francisco architectural firm of Anshen and Allen and built by Huff Construction of Stockton.

Mercy Hospital, founded in 1923, has 101 licensed beds, 200 physicians and more than 650 employees. The not-for-profit acute care hospital and integrated community health system offers general medical and surgical, emergency, maternity and nursery services; pediatric care and womenÕs services.

The UC Davis Health System consists of the UC Davis School of Medicine, the UC Davis Medical Center and a geographically dispersed network of primary care providers. UC Davis Medical Center is one of five University of California teaching hospitals. Licensed for 528 beds and fully accredited, it is the leading tertiary care referral center for 33 counties with nearly 5 million residents.

Mercy Cancer Center Fact Sheet

The Agreement
Mercy Hospital and Health Services and the UC Davis Health System have collaborated with local physicians to build a new outpatient cancer center in Merced. The new facility will be known as the Mercy Cancer Center/An affiliate of the UC Davis Cancer Network.

Construction and equipment costs are estimated at $6.8 million. The building is located at 3850 G Street, corner of G Street and Cormorant Drive in Merced. The new center was designed by the San Francisco firm of Anshen and Allen and built by Huff Construction of Stockton.

The new building is 13,500 square feet on a parcel of two acres of land. The replacement building for Mercy Hospital will be built on this site in 2005.

The two organizations formed a limited liability corporation to share expenses, including staffing costs and equipment. The corporation owns all assets of the center.

Major Equipment
Linear accelerator with dual-energy photon and five electron energies
Multi-leaf collimator
CT treatment simulator and three-dimensional treatment planning systems
Film processors
Telemedicine video consoles, cameras and high-speed (T1) phone lines

Projected Volumes (4th year)
Patients per year: 226 patients per year
Visits per year: 6,540
Average daily treatments: 26

Current Usage
Approximately 150 residents of Merced and surrounding communities visited the UC Davis Cancer Center between June 1997 and June 1999.

Physician Staff
Medical director: John D. Earle, MD, professor and chair, Department of Radiation Oncology, UC Davis School of Medicine
Radiation oncology: Vincent Capostagno, MD
Medical oncology (chemotherapy): Kota Shekar, MD

Clinical Staff
Radiation physicist
Dosimetrist
Chief radiation therapist
Radiation therapist
Registered nurse
Billing clerk/Receptionist

What They Do
Physicists work directly with the radiation oncologist in treatment planning and delivery. They usually have a Ph.D. in radiological physics and they may be certified by the American Board of Radiology or the American Board of Medical Physics. The physicist is responsible for the technical aspects of radiation delivery. He or she measures radiation beam characteristics, calibrates and commissions the linear accelerator and may create the treatment plan under the direction of the radiation oncologist. The physicist is responsible for the technical quality assurance of therapeutic radiation given to cancer patients.

Dosimetrists are usually radiation therapists who have had at least one additional year of training in dosimetry and are certified by the Medical Dosimetrist Certification Board. The dosimetrist uses treatment-planning computers to develop individualized treatment plans to carry out the radiation oncologistsÕ prescription. They carefully calculate the dose of radiation to make sure the tumor gets enough radiation.

Radiation therapists, sometimes called radiation therapy technologists, are certified by the American Registry of Radiologic Technology. They position the patient in the linear accelerator or other radiation device and administer the correct dose of radiation as prescribed by the radiation oncologist and planned by the dosimetrist.

New Services

Radiation Oncology
A linear accelerator creates high-energy radiation by using electricity to form a stream of fast-moving electrons. The electrons can be used to treat tumors of different depths, depending on the energy of electrons chosen. They may also be used to produce X-rays that can be aimed at different directions at a tumor, depositing maximum energy at that depth. A multi-leaf collimator further shapes the radiation, allowing targeted therapy that kills tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue to the greatest extent possible.

The center will also have a CT simulator and radiation planning computer that allows careful planning of how radiation is distributed at the tumor. Three-dimensional treatment planning gives superior information on tumor margins, a layer of cells surrounding the cancer that must also be killed for cancer to be cured.

In addition, the new equipment makes available conformal radiation therapy. This sends external radiation beams contoured precisely to the shape and depth of the tumor. It is used to treat prostate cancer and other solid tumors.

Medical Oncology
Many promising new cancer treatments are available through studies called clinical trials. Because of its affiliation with UC Davis Health System, Mercy Hospital patients will have local access to the more than 200 open trials being conducted at the UC Davis Cancer Center.

Telemedicine
Two telemedicine consoles will allow patients and physicians in Merced to visit with UC Davis faculty physicians in Sacramento. The equipment looks like a computer with a camera, speakers and a microphone and uses high-speed digital phone lines to ship audio and video in real time. One set of equipment will be available for video conferencing. Mercy physicians will be able to participate in UC Davis tumor board meetings, grand rounds or other educational sessions.

The other telemedicine equipment will be used for medical examinations. If a Merced clinician wants to consult with a UC Davis specialist, this special camera (sometimes called a derm-cam) allows for close viewing of skin, moles or wounds. A number of other scopes can be attached for viewing the inner ear, throat and nose. The Mercy Cancer Center is one of more than 30 sites linking with UC Davis via telemedicine.

Comprehensive Cancer Treatment
The new Mercy Cancer Center brings the services of a teaching hospital to Merced -- services for which residents have had to travel more than 100 miles. Mercy patients and physicians can consult with UC Davis cancer specialists, enroll in clinical trials and get state-of-the-art radiation oncology treatment in one convenient location.

The Resource Education Center
This library of cancer-related materials has two computers with Internet access to help people with cancer and their loved ones gather information on the disease. Prevention and Education
The building has conference rooms for Community Education Center programs. Family education and support programs are being planned, as is a possible UC Davis resident training program at the Mercy Cancer Center. Mercy Hospital recently started a new cancer support group that meets the fourth Wednesday of every month in staff rooms A and B in the hospital basement.

For more information about the Mercy/UC Davis Health System partnership and the UC Davis Cancer Center, please see the Mercy website at www.mercymercedCares.org or the UC Davis site at http://http://cancer.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu

Copies of all news releases from UC Davis Health System are available on the web at http://news.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu .

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