ONTARIO, OH (CRAWFORD COUNTY NOW)—Avita Health System held a ribbon cutting ceremony to announce the opening of the Jody M. Baker Cancer Center, known as The Jode Cancer Center. The facility officially opened for patient care on Nov. 6. It is located in Avita’s South Campus at 600 Richland Mall, Suite 206, in Ontario.
“Patients are going to receive coordinated care with all aspects of their treatment plan managed under one roof,” said Kim Winkle, Vice President of Operations, Avita Health System. “That’s the beauty of this cancer center. It’s all right here.”
The 22,000 sq. ft., $15 million-dollar facility will provide comprehensive cancer services with a patient-centered approach to help ensure that every patient receives the best possible treatment and support on their journey to recovery. The Jode Cancer Center features both radiation oncology and medical oncology clinics, as well as an infusion therapy suite designed with patient comfort in mind. Patients will have seamless access to their care teams with on-site pharmacy services, medication management, laboratory, and financial counselors.
“We are so thankful, yes, Avita chose Ontario,” said Chris Knapp, Mayor of Ontario. “Not only are they revitalizing Ontario and amplifying Ontario, they are amplifying Richland county and all the surrounding counties in the state of Ohio. We have one of the only areas in the state and possibly the nation to have this type of treatment for our communities.”
The Jode Cancer Center will feature advanced radiation therapy with the Varian® TrueBeam® state-of-the-art linear accelerator, including RapidArc® Dynamic hardware and the IDENTIFY™ System. Avita is the first in Ohio and one of the first few in the world to invest in RapidArc Dynamic. These technologies deliver precision radiation to minimize damage to the surrounding healthy tissue with real-time imaging to verify the patient’s position and precisely target the tumor with submillimeter accuracy. The Jode Cancer Center also features a dedicated PET/CT scanner to help detect cancer at its earliest stages, assess the extent of disease, and plan and monitor the effectiveness of treatment. An experienced team of medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, and physicists will collaborate to ensure every patient receives customized care tailored to their specific needs.
“We built a medical staff over the last 15 years that will support a lot of treatments for cancer,” said Jerry Morasko, President/CEO of Avita Health System. “A lot of cancer is still solved with surgery. We have neurologists, ENTs, general surgeons, a lot of these subspecialties that we’ve been putting together. We now have about 180 employed physicians at Avita so we have the largest multi-specialty group north of Columbus and south of Cleveland.”
For more information on Avita Health System’s cancer care, visit https://avitahealth.org/services/oncology/.