With the opening of the Palo Verde Cancer Center - Scottsdale on May 22, Palo Verde Cancer Specialists, a private practice, expanded to five locations in Arizona. The grand opening received an extra boost in the news because it was also the location of the 500th Accuray TomoTherapy System. DOTmed HealthCare Business News spoke with Dr. Lauren Stegman, one of the radiation oncologists for the new center to learn about the benefits of having a full service cancer center, the challenges to get it running and what the hopes are for its future.

HCBN: What are the most innovative technologies in-house at Palo Verde?
LS: For our radiation therapy, we have the newest TomoHDA machine — which allows us to give the most highly-focused radiation therapy from head to toe for all types of disease sites.

We have a state-of-the-art infusion center and onsite pharmacy for all forms of chemo, and even radiopharmaceuticals. The other thing — we are the only real center in Scottsdale that has fully integrated with full service cancer care all in one office. It’s great for continuity of care, teamwork between physicians, and patient convenience.

HCBN: Are there any treatments or technologies you’re exploring for greater future use?
LS: The main thing is in regard to Tomo-Therapy. As patients undergo therapy and the tumor changes, we can provide progressive treatment.

For radiopharmaceuticals, there’s Alpharadin (or Xofigo) for prostate cancer, the first drug of that nature that shows a survival benefit. We’re keeping up with the literature and offering state-of-the-art treatments as they become available. That’s part of the value of having a comprehensive center.

HCBN: What challenges did you face in creating the new facility and how did you overcome them?
LS: It was a challenge in combining two organizations with different structures and long histories and different specialties to develop a comprehensive center for our patients. Working with one another to plan out a center that met all our needs and facilitated a comfortable patient experience took a lot of discussion.

We’re here to provide the best care possible for patients. We feel it’s important that people can come to one place to get care for all their needs. Cancer care is an area of growing competition, an area where there are a lot of challenges regarding reimbursement, but there are a lot of dollars being spent. In order to maintain market share, you have to be constantly improving and offering measureable benefits in your patient care. I think that we have our area of expertise, but with the medical oncologists and radiation oncologists right next door to each other, it allows us to interact continually and learn from each other.

HCBN: Do you have any major goals you’re looking to achieve in your first year? In your first five years?
LS: We have clinical and outcome goals where we want to build our market share, increase patient satisfaction with a full follow-up plan and add to our database of patient outcomes for medical and radiation oncology. We want to be able to provide data to payors showing we’re offering superior outcomes and being competitive in the marketplace.

The business prospective of the physician investment was to provide care and the ability to do it as an affordable program for them was the key. If the physicians break even, it’s a successful project due to all the other factors. Our model says we should get back the investment within two or three years.

HCBN: With health care reform being on everyone’s minds, did that impact planning or your vision for the future?
LS: To me, it’s making sure that we’re ready to provide outcome data and really demonstrate that we offer superior care. We’re in a market that’s more data driven. By diversifying the services we provide, yet having them all together, it offers security to the physicians. Knowing they’ll be able to have those additional revenue streams to maintain service across the board protects from a drop in reimbursement to a particular service. In the Phoenix area, cancer care is highly advertised and growing dramatically — we wanted to make sure we had community-based physicians connected to the practice, we wanted to build this center to make sure it wasn’t a large national company, but instead made up of people in the community.


Click here to view the hospital spotlight pictorial of Palo Verde Cancer Center - Scottsdale.