NAGS HEAD, N.C. — This week, the new Carol S. and Edward D. Cowell, Jr. Cancer Center opened in Nags Head, the culmination of more than a decade of work to reduce cancer mortality on the Outer Banks.
It’s a collaboration between Outer Banks Health and its partners ECU Health and Chesapeake Regional Healthcare.
Before leaders launched their efforts to bring cancer treatment to the Outer Banks, patients had to drive to Hampton Roads, Elizabeth City, Greenville, N.C., or even farther for any kind of cancer care.
Dr. Charles Shelton, a radiation oncologist and medical director at the Cowell Cancer Center, said that lack of access to care likely lead to higher mortality rates in Dare County.
“Having a hospital here that focuses on access to services, we have really changed that paradigm by providing the majority of what people need to get cancer screening, cancer prevention and cancer care,” Shelton said.
Outer Banks Health achieved accreditation for cancer treatment in 2016, a rarity for so-called critical access hospitals, mainly in rural hospitals. It later became the only critical access hospital to be accredited in breast cancer treatment.
A new radiation treatment center opened to patients in 2019, and then conversations began about placing all the various cancer services Outer Banks Health grew to provide into one facility.
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“Patients may come in and see the medical oncologist and then have radiation therapy across the street,” said Amy Montgomery, senior administrator of operations at Outer Banks Health. “And as you may imagine, someone who is battling cancer and undergoing cancer treatment, that can take a toll on you.”
That led to the construction of the 10,000 square foot building, which is attached to the radiation center. It features treatment rooms, a CT scanner and supportive services like social workers and scalp cooling therapy that helps people undergoing chemotherapy to maintain their hair.
“It’s connected, it’s efficient, it’s better communication,” Dr. Shelton said. “Things just happen in a much more fluid environment.”
But the center also faces the same difficulties in recruiting providers that other health systems face.
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It’s still looking for a permanent medical oncologist to replace one who retired almost two years ago.
Rural areas, rural providers, rural hospitals and rural health care practices, clinics have always faced difficulty and challenges in recruiting people to work in rural areas," said George Pink, Deputy Director of North Carolina Rural Health Research Program at the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Specialists are particularly difficult to recruit because of patient volumes and so on."
The center’s leaders are confident that position will be filled soon, in the meantime the work to reduce cancer death rates continues. After being higher than the state average for years, they’re now lower in Dare County.
“If there is a way that we can help prevent cancer or diagnose cancer in an earlier stage when it’s more treatable, that’s where the work is and that’s what we’re doing and that’s how we’re making a difference,” Montgomery said.
