Cancer Center

Comprehensive Cancer Care Center

If you or a family member has been diagnosed with cancer, you owe it to yourself to call and make an appointment with the team of specialists at Hudson Valley Hospital Center's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Unlike others in the area, HVHC's Cancer Center offers all services in one location close to home. Our team of physicians and medical professionals will work together to design a treatment plan that coordinates all services so patients can receive treatment in one place, eliminating travel time and reducing stress. The center offers radiation, infusion and support services in a new state-of-the-art facility equipped with the latest technology and designed with comfort in mind.

Patient Navigator

When a person is first diagnosed with cancer it can be an overwhelming and confusing time. It is difficult to know where to turn with family and friends making multiple suggestions. At HVHC's Cancer Center, a medical professional called a patient navigator will guide the patient step by step through the process explaining options and coordinating appointments and treatment.

Cancer Protocols Determine Treatment

Cancer Care has changed dramatically in recent years. It is no longer necessary to travel long distances to get the latest in cancer care. Cancer research has provided protocols for treatment so physicians follow the same guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network no matter where the patient is treated. Unless a patient has a rare form of cancer or needs to undergo experimental treatments, they can receive care close to home.

Quality Physicians

This extraordinary program already has attracted nationally renowned physicians who see the Center as a forward thinking place to practice. These physicians include members of the Ashikari Breast Center, including Drs. Roy and Andrew Ashikari and Dr. Pond Kelemen. Their ties to research and past service to Memorial Sloan Kettering and Mount Sinai Medical Center have long positioned them as leaders in their field. Members of the New York Group for Plastic Surgery, Drs. C. Andrew Salzberg and R. Michael Koch – who specialize in microsurgery and breast  reconstruction as well as the full range of cosmetic surgery – have joined with the Ashikari team for a full service, surgical program.

A new Women's Health Center will provide all radiology and testing services including the latest in cancer treatment - Tomotherapy - a state-of-art radiation therapy that pinpoints cancer while sparing healthy tissue. HVHC is the only facility in the region to offer this treatment.

The Cancer Center will also includes a digestive disease laboratory and endoscopy suite and recruitment for a colorectal surgeon is underway.

The Center benefits by the hospital’s recently completed $100 million expansion. Patients will also like the free 450-space parking garage that is conveniently located steps from the Center’s front door, which connects to the hospital.

Most important for patients, however, is the renowned, interdisciplinary team of physicians that will form the backbone of the comprehensive program. More than 650 people in Hudson Valley Hospital Center’s primary service area will be newly diagnosed with cancer each year. On average, a cancer patient makes over 100 individual trips to obtain care during their first year of diagnosis and treatment. Our Center will help those patients by bringing excellent care closer to home.  

Our new center will offer doctors’ offices, treatment areas for surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Testing areas dedicated to early detection, screening and prevention. Pain and symptom clinics. A breast-cancer boutique.

The center will include medical staff who are experts in their field as well as as staff advocates who will walk patients and their families through each phase of treatment; experts on physical and psychological rehabilitation; and counselors in education, support and bereavement.

Our staff in different areas work together as collaborative medical teams. The coordinated approach envisioned for The Center is aimed at conserving patients’ energy, and making their lives a little easier.

The Center is powered by state-of-the-art technology. The technology offers new tools that will help integrate care and support a lifetime medical record.  New software programs give medical staff “power charts” that move across both inpatient and outpatient treatment areas and manage chemotherapy treatment and protocols, clinical documentation and medication administration.

The Hi·Art treatment system:

Conventional radiation treatment devices are at the end of an evolutionary path that began more than a century ago. Our center, in contrast, will use The TomoTherapy® Hi·Art® treatment system.

The system relies on secure centralized database software for treatment planning, quality assurance, patient set-up and treatment delivery. While conventional radiation therapy machines use five to nine beam angles, the Hi·Art treatment system delivers radiation continuously from all angles around the patient. The increased beam angles, along with  more precise beam modulation, create dose distributions that conform to complex tumor shapes.

An Infusion Center

The Infusion Center, on the first floor, is designed to make the experience of receiving chemo-therapy as convenient and stress-free as possible. It is a convenient alternative to long drives to distant hospitals, particularly important for patients undergoing multiple treatments.

Patients can receive intravenous infusions, therapeutic injections, and wound care in a safe, professional, and comfortable environment.