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Construction, Commissioning, and First Treatments at the ProCure Oklahoma City and Chicago Proton Therapy Facilities

Reviewer: Curtiland Deville
The Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania
Last Modified: May 28, 2010

Presented by: Andries N. Schreuder
Presenter's Affiliation: ProCure Treatment Centers, Department of Medical Physics and Technology, Bloomington, IN

Background

• ProCure Treatment Centers, Inc., was founded in 2005 to provide cancer patients increased access to proton therapy.
• The first ProCure facility opened in Oklahoma City and treated the first patient in April 2010. Several additional sites are in various stages of development.
• The objective of this review was to report on the ProCure's approach to providing management leadership and design, construction, integration, financing, staffing, training, and day-to-day operations for proton therapy centers.

Methods

• The ProCure proton therapy facilities are designed with a strategy of simplification and standardization.
• The design is optimized to accommodate the IBA proton therapy system, supplemented with ProCure- specific designed equipment to meet a non-hospital based facility's needs.
• Facilities are equipped with 2 dual-inclined beams, one fixed beam, and one full 360-angle gantry based treatment room.
• All 4 rooms incorporate active scanning based treatment techniques.
• ProCure's Training and Development Center in Bloomington, Indiana, provides pre-commissioning and before-the-job training to physicians, therapists, dosimetrists, and physicists on real simulators; 6000 man hours were provided leading up to the opening of the first facility in Oklahoma City, which ultimately allowed for the shortened commissioning time and successful start to clinical operations.

Results

• The first patient was treated in Oklahoma City in August 2009.
  • The facility was constructed and commissioned in 26 months. The second room became operational in 4 months.
  • 84 patients have been treated and 34 patients are currently under treatment
• The second planned facility broke ground in Chicago in December 2008; the timeline for commissioning and construction is expected to be reduced to 24 months.
• Additional facilities have been planned and are in various stages of development in New Jersey, Seattle, Detroit, and Boca Raton.
• Global project management is paramount to rapid start-up with timely and complete integration and validation of the facilities.

Author's Conclusions

• Standardization and simplification of facility design has allowed for compressed construction schedules to be achieved fat ProCure proton therapy facilities.
• This trend will bring further accessibility of proton therapy to patients.

Scientific Implications

• The increasing efficiency of the ProCure module in establishing proton therapy centers should indeed make proton therapy logistically and geographically more available to larger number of patients.
• There will be a growing demand for high levels of evidence evaluating treatment outcome as proton therapy centers become increasingly available in the private sector.