Peninsula Cancer Center opened its doors in Poulsbo in September, bringing state-of-the-art radiation oncology treatment and top physicians to North Kitsap. The independently- owned clinic was founded by Dr. Berit Madsen and Dr. R. “Alex” Hsi, who have more than 25 years combined in cancer care.
The two physicians were previously business partners in practice at the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, and have been named among the city’s top doctors by Seattle Magazine for five years. Madsen, who lives on Bainbridge Island, worked at Virginia Mason for 15 years, helping to build the breast cancer and the head and neck cancer teams.
Peninsula Cancer Center is not like a typical clinic. The waiting room has a homey, warm atmosphere and displays art from local artists. The center, located on Seventh Avenue (in the same building as the recently opened Liberty Bank), has an ample number of windows and the interior uses cheerful, bright colors — each room has its own color scheme and is named accordingly, ie “the red room,” “the green room” etc.
The physicians use a CT scanner for treatment planning purposes. The scanner allows for the anatomy to be viewed in 3-D, and the scan is transmitted to a computer system to recreate the body and to calculate the distance and angles of the radiation beams. “It’s important for us to have our own scanner because everything needs to be lined up perfectly with the linear accelerator,” Madsen said.
The Elekta Synergy linear accelerator, housed in a room that has a lead door and 3?-feet-thick walls, is the latest model in accelerators. Its guts — tubes, wires, circuit boards — fill an entire small room (not visible to the patient). The beams can image while delivering treatment, so the machine is sort of like a CT scanner and X-ray in one. The beams are accurate to the submillimeter.
In addition to the linear accelerator, the room is equipped with a device called Calypso, a unique piece of technology that can monitor organ tissue during treatment and is specifically used for prostate cancer currently. “The prostate goes ‘in an out’ and Calypso can track it and follow it around,” Hsi said. “They call it a GPS for the body.”
The two founding physicians saw a need for radiation oncology in the North Kitsap area. Their team includes seven staff members including one PhD-level physicist.
“We bring an important service to this side of Kitsap Peninsula and it will benefit other specialties because more patients will choose to stay here,” Madsen said.
Peninsula Cancer Center currently provides only radiation oncology but will also work closely with medical oncologists from other providers. “We hope to create something more convenient, with everything under one roof, but right now we feel we can complement the services that are not already here, to give the community full-service cancer care,” Hsi said.
A week before the practice opened, it already had 30 people scheduled for the first month, with the majority coming from Kitsap but others from the Olympic Peninsula and South Sound.
One of the unique aspects about Peninsula Cancer Center is the patients’ full access to the two physicians. Madsen and Hsi not only give out their direct phone lines to patients, they also give them their e-mail addresses. Patients can also choose the length of their visits.
Poulsbo resident Lisa Miller commuted to Seattle Monday through Friday for six weeks for her radiation treatments and said it was comforting for her to know that Dr. Madsen was from her own community. She said everybody deals with cancer in different ways: Some people need more technical information while others need emotional support. “I really like that she (Madsen) is willing to meet the patients wherever they are,” she said. “She’s very compassionate that way and very available. I could ask her any question and she was willing and available to talk to me about any piece of my treatment, not just radiation.”
Although her breast cancer is in remission and she is no longer undergoing treatment, Miller was glad to hear about the opening of Peninsula Cancer Center. “It would have been fabulous for me to have someone so qualified, so good, a great doctor, in Poulsbo so I didn’t have to take the ferry to Seattle,” she said.
For more information, visit www.peninsulacancercenter.com.
