This past week’s 1,000th patient celebration culminated a whirlwind week of progress for Provision and its quest to make proton therapy as available and accessible as any other cancer treatment.
In short: More patients than ever are coming to Provision Center for Proton Therapy in Knoxville. And Provision will soon be delivering protons to patients around the world.
Provision President Mary Lou DuBois and Founder and Chairman Terry Douglass took Tuesday’s 1,000th patient celebration as opportunity to talk about the new developments.
Locally, the Provision Center for Proton Therapy is seeing more than 90 patients per day, making it one of the top proton centers in the country in terms of treatment capacity, said DuBois. The milestone also demonstrates the need for the future planned expansion of two additional treatment rooms late this year or early next, she said. These rooms will be equipped with Provision’s own ProNova proton therapy machines, marking a significant new area of growth for the company.
At the same time, the company is getting ready to export its technology and “Culture of Care” around the world. Last week Provision announced a joint venture, including a $25 million investment in Provision, to set up and equip proton therapy centers in China. And at Tuesday’s celebration, Douglass announced two new centers on the drawing board there—one at a 1,000-bed cancer hospital in Tianjin and the other at a 2,000-bed cancer hospital in Harbin.
“We will have three-room systems in each of these locations,” Douglass said. “We are really excited about it. Cancer is not diagnosed or treated well … in China, and we want to impact that just like we’ve impacted that in our community.”
Speaking of community impact, three main local television networks covered the 1000 patients celebration, interviewing 1,000th patient Amy Rush, a North Carolina school teacher who learned she would be the 1000th graduate only that morning! She was a wonderful sport, and a wonderful spokeswoman for Provision and her experience there.