By HEIDI PRESCOTT, Tribune Staff Writer Story
Created: Apr 22, 2010 at 2:16 PM EDT
Story Updated: Apr 22, 2010 at 2:16 PM EDT
MISHAWAKA — Two area health care providers announced a collaborative venture today to open a new cancer treatment center at Edison Lakes in Mishawaka.
This center, which will serve as a small cancer hospital with in-patient beds, is slated to open in August.
Cancer Care Partners is the name for the venture that has been nearly two years in the making by the South Bend Clinic and Goshen Center for Cancer Care.
The partners will lease the current Del Pilar Medical and Urgent Care Center at 301 E. Day Road from a South Bend development company that will purchase and add onto the building.
Del Pilar’s practice will be relocated to another existing building at Edison Lakes.
Cancer Care Partners will invest about $7.5 million in equipment and furnishings, as it brings a team of 50 specialists together under one roof and incorporates state-of-the-art radiation therapy now used at Goshen.
"We’re really leapfrogging the level of cancer care that’s delivered here right now," said Paul Meyer, executive director of South Bend Clinic. "We wanted to do something different in cancer care. Surprisingly enough to us as we started looking around, little Goshen had the best name recognition and program around."
Medical, surgical and radiation oncologists, and other cancer specialists, will work side-by-side in determining the best treatment plan for and monitoring the progress of each patient.
Surgeries also will be done at the center, and it will provide several inpatient beds that make it different from other cancer-care center efforts in the region.
"We are coming together against a common enemy, and that enemy is cancer," said Joseph Gagliardi, chief executive of Cancer Care Partners and senior vice president of Goshen’s Center for Cancer Care. "We’re one clinic strong and one hospital strong, but together — my goodness sakes, what we collectively bring to the table doesn’t exist anywhere else."
Continue to check this Web site and read Friday’s South Bend Tribune for updates on this story. Staff writer Heidi Prescott: hprescott@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6070