In a move generating controversy among Michigan's top hospitals, Beaumont Hospitals announced plans Thursday to team up with an Indiana company to build a $159-million proton-beam cancer radiation facility on its Royal Oak campus.

The debate centers on a type of cancer radiation therapy offered at about a half-dozen U.S. sites called proton-beam therapy. By comparison with traditional radiation therapy, which uses X-ray or photon light particles to zap tumors, proton-beam therapy releases tiny atomic particles that are expected to more closely target a tumor without hurting nearby tissue as the energy moves in and out of a cancer site.

Proton-beam therapy also receives at least double the reimbursement from Medicare compared with standard radiation, which is fueling interest in the technology.

Beaumont must get state approval to move ahead with its partnership and it faces opposition from several hospital systems that had been talking with Beaumont about collaborating on the proton-beam project.

Michigan's Certificate of Need Commission meets Tuesday to discuss the Beaumont proposal, along with a companion proposal by a commission work group requiring any hospital in Michigan interested in proton-beam therapy to be part of a state collaboration. The Henry Ford Health System and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute sent letters earlier this month to the commission requesting their own proton-beam facilities, in part to block the Beaumont bid.

Those bids "are placeholders so we don't get boxed out of the process," said Dr. Jack Ruckdeschel, chief executive officer of the Karmanos institute. "We want to make sure this doesn't turn into an arms race for technology. We need one of these facilities in Michigan, so we don't become a backwater, but we don't need five or six of them."

The Beaumont bid also is opposed by the Economic Alliance for Michigan, a state labor and business coalition.

"The introduction of this technology to treat cancer needs to be done properly to assure quality and affordability of patient care," said Marsha Manning, a member of the economic alliance and manager of General Motors Corp.'s Southeast Michigan Community Health Care Initiatives.

Hadley Ford, chief executive officer of ProCure Treatment Centers Inc. of Bloomington, Ind., said proton-beam therapy "releases little energy going through the body but at certain depths, it slows down and releases energy like a firecracker. You can kill a tumor with much less damage to healthy tissue. It's like radiating a cup, without radiating the water inside."

ProCure provides a model and management support for the design, construction, operation of proton-beam therapy centers. It also sets up local companies to partner with investors and a collaborating hospital to purchase proton equipment, though ProCure also designs several related components of the system. The biggest costs of a proton-beam facility are the purchase of a cyclotron machine to deliver the energy, a $60-million to $70-million investment, and construction of the building, another $35 million, ProCure's Ford estimated.

Dr. Frank Vicini, chief of radiation oncology at Beaumont, said the cost of the project is such that Beaumont decided it needed to collaborate with a firm like the Bloomington company that has opened or plans to open proton-beam facilities in a half-dozen other cities.

Beaumont would contribute $13 million to the project. If approved, Beaumont hopes to open the facility by 2010. Officials predict it will generate $34 million in construction benefits and create 100 high-paying jobs, he said.

Vicini called proton-beam therapy "the wave of the future" in cancer radiation treatment. "It's just a matter of time before every major metro area has a proton therapy center."

He said collaboration as Ford and Karmanos propose would slow the project, as others would be unlikely to agree on where such a facility would be built, among other questions. Still, if Beaumont wins state approval, physicians at other hospitals could use the center, Vicini said.

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last updated: 03/10/08

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