Shore Cancer Center history
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It was a triumph for Shore Health Services and the
community when Shore Cancer Center opened in 2003. |
In January 2003 a new 10,000-square-foot building was opened to house Shore Cancer Center. It was the culmination of years of planning.
Shore Memorial Hospital and the medical staff here had been treating cancer for decades. Dr. John Rogers Mapp, a radiologist, offered radiation therapy as far back as the 1950s. Various surgeons on the Shore also provided cancer treatment regimens.
In 1975 Dr. Drury Stith, a medical oncologist, opened a chemotherapy and cancer information center. Originally located in a dedicated unit within Shore Memorial Hospital, this new service grew steadily.
Another milestone came in 2000, when the cancer program at Shore Memorial Hospital won accreditation as a Community Cancer Program from the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons.
Clearly there was a need for a cancer center — as well as the medical expertise to support it. Dedicated volunteers set to work raising $3 million. The money would not only help to build the new facility, it would also allow for the expansion of services to include radiation therapy.
Construction of the $5 million cancer center began in February 2002. Only 11 months later, the first chemotherapy patient was treated in the new facility, on Jan. 27, 2003.
On March 5, 2003, the first patient received radiation therapy from the new Shore Cancer Center, marking a milestone in the history of cancer services on the Shore.
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