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EDEN — Cancer patients in and around Eden will no longer have to make the 35-mile drive to Greensboro for radiation therapy planning.

The final component for a complete cancer treatment program is being put in place at Morehead Memorial Hospital.

“We’ve had a cancer center since 1994,” said Kerry Faunce, the hospital’s director of marketing. “And we do chemotherapy and radiation therapy here. But patients still had to go to Greensboro to Moses Cone to get a treatment plan created. They would send the data back to us here to our cancer center. That was kind of the last piece of the puzzle that we needed.”

The new services will be paid for in part by a $100,000 grant from the Golden LEAF foundation and a $317,000 bequest from the estate of Mary Robertson, whose husband, Jack, had been a patient at Morehead.

“We’re a Tier One county, which means economically, we have a lot of low-income people in this county,” Faunce said. “And transportation can be a problem. So this will make it a lot easier for patients, provide better access.”

Ed Holbrook, executive director of the Morehead Memorial Hospital Foundation, said, “With the aging population in this area, incidences of cancer are probably going to increase in the next couple of decades. And we’re going to start looking at capacity issues and potential for expansion of the facility.”

Last week, the hospital installed a LAP movable laser system that allows physicians to localize and mark set-up points on a patient.

At the end of the month, the hospital’s John Smith Jr.-Dalton McMichael Sr. Cancer Center also will get a new medical dosimetrist, who will acquire the CT images of a patient, transfer them to a treatment planning system and work with the doctor to come up with a plan to deliver the right dose of radiation to the tumor while sparing other tissue. That work previously had been contracted out to Moses Cone.

“With the services centralized, the patient will be able to start treatment sooner,” medical physicist Vicky Howard said. “For head and neck patients, it’s especially important to get started as soon as they can. For a lot of patients, there are a lot of unknowns, and it’s important to establish a connection early on to alleviate some of that stress.

“And also, some of our patients come from north of here, so it’s a long journey for them to go into Greensboro.”

Among other services, the cancer center at Morehead offers screening programs, chemotherapy and surgical treatment.

“But, having a portion of the treatment team down in Greensboro hadn’t been ideal,” radiation oncologist Stacy Wentworth said. “We’ve made it work, but having a treatment planner here will make the team even stronger. We do seem to do a lot better when we’re all in a room rather than talking over the phone.

“It’ll be nice to have it all here.”

Contact Robert C. Lopez at 691-5091 or robert.lopez@news-record.com