A linear accelerator addition at the Mississippi Cancer Institute in McComb is a step closer to reality after approval on Tuesday of a contractor to build a vault to house the machine.
Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center trustees this week accepted the $879,500 bid from Smith Painting & Contracting of Hattiesburg to build the vault. Trustees said it was the lowest and best of five bids submitted, including one for $1,099,700 from Clark Construction of McComb.
The highest bid was $1,135,000 from Pennington Construction. Others were $1,029,000 from C. Perry Builders and $966,900 from Panola Construction Co.
Southwest CEO Norman Price said the architect, Landry and Lewis of Hattiesburg, estimated the cost to be $1.1 million to $1.2 million.
“This is way under (the estimate),” Price said.
The new vault will be built next to the existing structure that holds the accelerator, which has been in use for the past 11 years for radiation oncology at the cancer center. The vault must be built, and the $3 million in new medical equipment placed inside before the existing machinery can be taken off-line. This will ensure uninterrupted treatment to patients.
Dr. Burnett Hanson, the radiation oncologist at the cancer center since 2004, has called the linear accelerator “the workhorse of radiation therapy.”
The accelerator rotates around the patient, delivering radiation. And the new machinery, by Philips, will bring new technology, allowing Hanson and his team to reduce treatment time from 20 minutes to 6 or 7.
The new equipment includes a CT scan to better pinpoint the exact radiation treatment location.
The cancer center will offer intensity-modulated radiation therapy to deliver high doses of radiation to areas of treatment while minimizing dose to surrounding normal tissue, 3D treatment planning, pro-state seed brachytherapy, high-dose rate brachytherapy, image-guided radiation therapy, CT simulation and digital portal imaging.
Hospital trustees this week also:
• Approved 60-month lease agreements, including service contracts, with Philips Medical Capital to replace two heart catheterization labs — one for $1.38 million and another for just over $1 million.
• Approved a 54-month lease with Philips to upgrade the 6-slice CT scanner to a 16-slice model at the Lawrence County Hospital in Monticello. The hospital is part of the Southwest Health System group.
• Agreed to buy hand-held devices from McKesson Technologies for administering medication. The equipment, which will be available to nurses on all floors at Southwest, will cost $111,660.
• Approved the purchase of a Philips ultrasound system for the Lawrence County Hospital for $97,000. The hospital’s ultrasound went down, and the equipment is a top priority. Price to trustees that the price will be more than $100,000 after the first of the new year.
Price acknowledged the day’s purchases were significant, but he said they were necessary to keep the hospital as up to date as possible.
“I know y’all spent a lot of money,” Price said. “It happens; it has to be replaced.”
The Cardiovascular Institute of Mississippi, which is adjacent to SMRMC, is six years old, and equipment needs to be upgraded, not only for safety but for newer technology.
Price said that by going into group purchasing with Philips and the University of Alabama, “we got a good price. This is normally $2.6 to $3 million,” he said of the cath lab costs. “That’s a pretty good discount.”
And he said the Lawrence County expenses are necessary to keep the hospital up to standards.
“It’s been a good relationship for both of us,” Price said of the partnership of the two hospitals. “Before we came on, they didn’t have a CT scanner.”
