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 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 Bronson Battle Creek is ranked among the best in the U.S.

How can a hospital in Michigan be ranked among the leading treatment centers?

The Cancer Care Center staff at Bronson Battle Creek 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 Bronson Battle Creek. Bronson Battle Creek 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.

Now, The Cancer Care Center offers a new treatment procedure for Breast Cancer – 5-Day Targeted Radiation Therapy. Targeted Radiation Therapy delivered from inside the body—also called ‘brachytherapy’— has been used to treat many cancers. Usage as a treatment for prostate cancer goes back as far as 1917, and has been the standard treatment for this cancer for several decades. Targeted Radiation Therapy of the breast limits exposure of normal, healthy tissue to the radiation. This helps to minimize side effects such as skin discoloration and scarring (‘cosmesis’), burning, fatigue and damage to surrounding organs. Because Targeted Radiation Therapy uses a higher dose of radiation limited to the site surrounding the cancer, therapy can be completed in a shorter period of time—typically 5 days. Conventional external-beam radiation therapy takes 6 to 7 weeks to complete.

Bronson Battle Creek 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, Bronson Battle Creek 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 Bronson Battle Creek 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 Bronson Battle Creek 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 Bronson Battle Creek 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.

Bronson Battle Creek 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 Bronson Battle Creek. 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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