Providence Medford Medical Center has opened a new, lead-lined suite for internal radiation treatment, expanding access to gynecologic cancer care in southern Oregon.
The new room, funded in part by community donations, replaces a system that forced internal radiation patients to wait for space in a vault built for external radiation. Hospital leaders say consolidating the procedure into a single private suite will improve scheduling, privacy, and comfort while allowing Providence to offer hundreds more treatments each year.
Providence says it is the only hospital between Redding and Springfield to offer this type of internal radiation treatment, which is more targeted and reduces the damage to healthy tissue.
Tara Goffic, a medical dosimetrist who helps plan the internal radiation treatments, said sharing the same lead-lined vault used for external radiation treatments has created a scheduling nightmare.
“Sometimes, we'll have the patient already set up for external beam, and then we'll be wheeling somebody in to treat them really quickly between external beam treatment," said Goffic. "It's not fair to either patient."
Goffic said this facility will also give these patients more dignity and privacy. Radiation for gynecologic cancers is delivered through a device inserted into the vagina. The procedure is currently performed in an operating room, and patients are then taken by gurney down an elevator to the treatment room. Goffic said the process can make patients feel vulnerable. In the new suite, many patients will be able to complete the procedure in the same room with the same staff.
Pat Berry said his wife, Anne, went through internal radiation treatment for endometrial cancer in 2024, and sharing a facility with the external radiation team made things more difficult.
“We know that the patients that are going to be able to receive the treatment here are going to be much more comfortable," he said. "Because being wheeled from room to room and having to just find time to be able to share that space was a bit of an inconvenience in terms of scheduling.”
Pat and Anne Berry are some of the donors who helped raise $2 million for the new suite. The project required renovating an old medical records room and installing full lead-lining to contain the radiation.
Providence said the new facility will allow for about 250 more brachytherapy treatments per year and about 3,000 more external radiation treatments. It will also free up operating room time.
Providence Medford currently only uses internal radiation to treat gynecologic cancers, but Goffic said this new suite could eventually be used to treat other types of cancer.
