Cancer Care Northwest PS, which opened a $7 million cancer-treatment center southeast of downtown Spokane two months ago, now is readying plans to open a North Side facility.


The expansion of the physician-owned enterprise could intensify discussions among Spokanes major hospitals about how to respond jointly to the competition. They have been studying how to solidify the position of their cancer services through a cooperative venture called Inland Northwest Cancer Centers that they formed last year, but havent announced any major initiatives.


Dr. Bruce Cutter, a medical oncologist and president of Cancer Care Northwest, says that on the North Side, the doctors group has agreed to lease about 12,000 square feet of floor space in a new $10 million office building thats being erected at 609 E. Holland, behind the Northpointe Plaza shopping center.


Northpointe Office Building LLC, a company headed by prominent Spokane developer Dick Vandervert, is developing the three-story, 102,000-square-foot structure on a 6.2-acre site just across the street from Vandervert Construction Inc.s offices.


Cutter says Cancer Care Northwest expects to open its treatment center in the new building by next spring or summer. The treatment center will occupy the entire first floor of one of the buildings wings, he says.


Although smaller than the 21,000-square-foot treatment center that Cancer Care Northwest opened Oct. 18 near the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Sherman Street, the North Side facility will offer a full spectrum of cancer care, Cutter says. It will have physicians offices, exam rooms, a chemotherapy area, a radiation area equipped with a new linear accelerator, and a diagnostic area equipped with X-ray and computerized-tomography scanning equipment, he says. It probably will employ about 20 people, some of whom will divide their time between that facility and the one on Sherman, and it eventually will serve more than 100 patients a day, he estimates.


The physicians who own Cancer Care Northwest formerly did business together here as Spokane Oncology/Hematology Associates PS. They changed the name of the practice earlier this year before opening the treatment center on Sherman. The practice has been operating an office in a 2,500-square-foot space at 5719 N. Lidgerwood, near Holy Family Hospital, but plans to close that office when the new cancer center opens, Cutter says.


Cancer Care Northwests treatment center on Sherman employs about 35 people and serves an average of about 110 patients a day. Plans for that center originally were proposed in 1997, but then were delayed while Spokane Oncology/Hematology negotiated with the major hospitals here on a possible collaboration of cancer-care services. Those negotiations failed, however, because of complications that arose in trying to work out details for the private-nonprofit partnership, leaving the doctors group and its management company, Dallas-based Physician Reliance Network Inc., to develop the project on their own.


Physician Reliance Network was to own the building and also provide management services at the center. Since then, those roles have been assumed by U.S. Oncology, a new entity formed a number of months ago through the merger of Physician Reliance Network and American Oncology Resources Inc., Cutter says. U.S. Oncology also will provide capital for the North Side project and management services to that center, he says.