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From a business perspective, cancer treatment is complicated. It cuts across medical disciplines and calls for teamwork among physicians. It requires substantial funded research to reveal next generation strategies in fighting the disease. And it must be accessible to vast numbers of people, rural and urban, insured or not, since early detection and the availability of treatment dramatically impact mortality rates.

About 85% of cancer patients are treated not at National Cancer Institute-designated facilities like M.D. Anderson in Houston or Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, but at community centers like Mary Bird Perkins. Such facilities must focus on making themselves accessible to regional patients, while also constantly push to integrate new methods and ideas, President/CEO Todd D. Stevens says.

“Our board’s vision has been very clear. [We] want this organization to be on the cutting edge,” says Stevens, who was recruited to Baton Rouge from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston a decade ago. Stevens has led Mary Bird through a handful of noteworthy accomplishments that have helped place the cancer center on the national map.

Since 2004, Mary Bird has earned accreditation and respect for its retooled medical physics program, a partnership with LSU that is producing substantial research. The facility also was recently selected to participate in two major national pilots, including the National Community Cancer Center Program, which makes care accessible to more residents and advances research. A total of 14 cancer centers nationwide were selected.

A second pilot, the Total Cancer Care program, brings Mary Bird patients into a major research initiative. While cancers have historically been grouped according to area affected [breast, prostate, lung], the cancers can be grouped further by their genetic imprint, Stevens says. Determining the cancer’s unique makeup, or “fingerprint,” will help oncologists select the right course of treatment. The research project will lead to cancer treatment to become more personalized, rather than follow a blanket approach, Stevens says.

While the participation in the program is purely about research, not individual care for participants, the program gives Mary Bird access to one of the most exciting developing fields in cancer treatment.

“These programs are really going to help us accelerate where we are and reach our objectives faster,” Stevens says.

Mary Bird has also gained national traction with its medical physics program. Five years ago, Stevens helped recruit Kenneth Hogstrom, a well-known medical physicist and 25-year veteran of M.D. Anderson. He was hired to grow the small medical physics program shared between the cancer center and LSU, which had potential but little heft. Medical physicists are instrumental in cancer treatment, since they program, monitor, calibrate and research the potential of linear accelerators, the large scanners that dispense radiation.

The research of medical physicists has substantially advanced radiation therapy, which now is able to hit tumors with unprecedented accuracy despite obstructions, thus minimizing residual damage on healthy tissue.

Hogstrom, who holds the Dr. Charles Smith Chair of Medical Physics at LSU and is chief of physics at Mary Bird, has produced substantial results. The now-accredited medical physics program features hands-on, focused curriculum, a residency program and ongoing significant research. A Ph.D. program is under way.

Program graduate Koren Smith, now a staff medical physicist at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, started the MBPCC-LSU program the same year Hogstrom arrived. She says she watched him transform it into a dynamic research hub in which students had substantial clinical time. The hands-on nature of her training was one of the factors that helped her land her current position, she says.

“A whole year, for half a day every day, we were in the clinic working with patients, and it helped me so much in looking for job,” Smith says. “The mentoring was wonderful.”

Talented students, Hogstrom says, are key to advancing the program because they push research.

“We continue to publish work in national journals, and we continue to have success in bringing grants to Mary Bird for research,” he says.

The program’s 12 graduate students helped produce eight papers at the annual conference of the American Academy of Physicians in Medicine this year, including groundbreaking research on improved cosmesis in breast cancer patients. They found new ways of attacking tumors with less impact on the thin tissues of the chest that are set to become the new national protocol. His students and staff also have participated in research that has narrowed the treatment field of brain tumors and nerve conditions in the head and neck to better than 1 millimeter.

Peter Almond, a well-known medical physicist at M.D. Anderson and former president of AAPM, says the advancements in the MBPCC-LSU program have been impressive. “Ken has brought a new depth that really wasn’t there before,” says Almond, adding that while many community centers exist alongside universities, the partnerships don’t always exist.

“You have to have the right cancer center and the right research institution and the right person to make it happen,” Almond says. “There’s a uniqueness to what’s going on at LSU and Mary Bird Perkins.”

Elsewhere, Mary Bird has made substantial strides in bringing education, screening and treatment to more Louisianans.

“Access to cancer care saves lives,” Stevens says, “and for many patients treatment close to home makes all the difference because they can continue their routine and fall back on the support of friends and family.”

To broaden its reach, Mary Bird Perkins has added partnerships with regional hospitals outside Baton Rouge, including St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Covington, Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma and, most recently, St. Elizabeth Hospital in Gonzales, announced earlier this year. The partnerships allow Mary Bird to reach 18 parishes.

Stevens says Mary Bird’s involvement in the NCCCP program gives the facility exposure to the latest trends in the field, including national clinical trials and integrated treatment practices—all of which benefit patients.

Participation in NCCCP also will improve how Mary Bird can build upon its history of reaching underserved populations by introducing best practices from around the country. Similarly, the program is setting standards on how facilities should handle biospecimens, which will enable long-term research.

One of the factors that helped Mary Bird land the NCCCP designation was its IT capacity, which will help it integrate into a nationwide research registry. Stevens says the country is on the cusp of streamlining research and drawing from a larger pool of patients, a factor that will accelerate research.

The NCCCP program recently announced it would extend the three-year grants to a fourth year.

“Participation in programs like these is giving us a competitive advantage,” Stevens says. “It will fast track our progress.”