Cancer Care Center
The Cancer Care Center Overview
You don’t have to travel hundreds of miles away for great
cancer care
When you hear the phrase ‘Leader in cancer treatment,’ what
is the first place that comes to mind? MD Anderson Cancer
Center in Houston or Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard?
How about Cedars-Sinai Cancer Care Center in Los Angeles
or The Cancer Care Center in Battle Creek? Wait a minute.
The Cancer Care Center in Battle Creek? Yes, Battle Creek.
Of 109 cancer centers surveyed recently by Press Ganey
Associates, the health care industry’s leading independent
vendor of satisfaction measurement and improvement services,
The Cancer Care Center at Battle Creek Health System is ranked
among the best in the U.S. BCHS is in the top 15 for quality
and exceptional service. The medical oncology program achieved
the 99 th percentile, second in the nation. And its patients
continue to rank the overall clinical care they receive there
in the top 5%.
How can a hospital in Michigan be ranked among the leading
treatment centers?
The Cancer Care Center staff at BCHS is committed to making
certain that our patients have access to quality cancer care
close to home. Our programs offer comprehensive, state-of-the-art
services based upon the latest cancer clinical trials, sophisticated
diagnostic equipment that provide more accurate tumor detection
and staging information, a multi-specialty team that coordinates
the best treatment options, life-long patient follow-up through cancer
registry, and ongoing monitoring and improvement of care.
Press Ganey research is not the only source for recognizing
the true value of the services offered at Battle Creek Health
System. BCHS was the first hospital in Southwest Michigan
to provide a shared Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging
system. PET is a non-invasive, diagnostic procedure that
provides unique information about the function of body organs
and exact locations of disease—information not available
through traditional diagnostic techniques. PET provides more
accurate tumor detection and staging information to aid oncologists
and surgeons in defining the most appropriate treatment and
management options.
The Cancer Care Center was also the first to offer Intensity
Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). The system is equipped
with special software for planning and delivering ultra-precise
cancer care to plan and then deliver tightly focused radiation
beams to cancerous tumors. Considered the world’s most
advanced radiation therapy, IMRT enables clinicians to deliver
a dose that conforms to the shape of the tumor, significantly
reducing the amount of radiation to surrounding healthy tissues—and
significantly improving the opportunity care.
Battle Creek Health System is an active participant in the
Grand Rapids Clinical Oncology Program (GRCOP), which is
funded by the National Cancer Institute and a consortium
of hospitals. Through clinical trials, BCHS cancer patients
can participate in cutting-edge treatment research in the
quest to cure cancer.
Cancer clinical trials develop better ways of detecting,
treating, and eventually preventing cancer. The trials test
many types of treatment such as new drugs, new approaches
to surgery or radiation therapy, new combinations of treatments,
or new methods such as gene therapy. By taking part in a
clinical trial, participants are among the first to receive
new research treatments before they are widely available.
The Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of
Surgeons also recognizes BCHS as a Community Hospital Comprehensive
Cancer Program. This approval, the highest awarded and held
by fewer than 10% of hospitals nationwide, is only presented
to those facilities that have voluntarily committed to provide
the best in diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Speaking of the CoC, it recently ranked The Cancer Care
Center among the best in the nation for its work with adjuvant
chemotherapy therapy (ACT).
CoC measures and assesses the quality of care provided
to cancer patients, and announced that BCHS standard programs
and clinical trials have clearly demonstrated a survivorship
benefit for individuals receiving adjuvant chemotherapy therapy
following surgical resection of Stage III colon cancers that
have spread to their lymph nodes. Previous studies have shown
that survivorship can be improved from 30% with surgery alone
for Stage III colon cancer to over 70% with adjuvant chemotherapy.
Relative to other centers, the medical oncology department
at The Cancer Care Center at BCHS treated 90% of its patients
with Stage III colon cancer with adjuvant chemotherapy treatment.
The state and national averages were 68% and 66% respectively.
Since The Cancer Care Center is involved with both research
and standard care, it is better able to offer the very latest
in cancer care to its patients. The high ranking validates
that.
Battle Creek Health System is a member of the Association
of Community Cancer
Centers (ACCC). The ACCC is in the forefront of the development
of clinical indicators and guidelines to evaluate and improve
cancer care and patient outcomes.
These newest survey results speak well of the ongoing comprehensive
care patients receive at The Cancer Care Center at Battle Creek
Health System. They also demonstrate a commitment we have to
our patients that they will have access to all of the medical
specialists who are involved in diagnosing and treating cancer.
The point is you don’t have to travel someplace
else for great cancer care. It is available right here in Southwest
Michigan.
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