CEOs You Should Know- MD Proton Treatment Center

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Episode Transcript

(00:02):
I Heeart Media presents CEOs you shouldknow. I am John Dinkle, former
president publisher of the Baltimore Business Journaland now founder and CEO of Dinkel Business
Development. This saus iHeart radio CEOsyou should know, and I'm here today
with doctor Bill Regimee, Chair ofthe University of Maryland School the Medicine Department
of Radiation Oncology, and executive directorof the Maryland Proton Treatment Center. Welcome

(00:25):
Doctor Regimee, and welcome to theshowy. Thanks for having me John,
looking forward to the conversation. Yeah, me too. So let's begin by
getting to know you in the organizationa little bit more so for those who
may not be familiar, could youtell us more about the Maryland Proton Treatment
Center. Yeah, So the MarylandProton Treatment Center represents the most it brings
to the region, and so Ionly wanted to state in Maryland right now,

(00:47):
the most advanced form of radiation treatmentdelivery protons, and that protons are
essentially compared to standard radiation, acharged particle that when you deliver the radiation
deposits to essens you all of theinto the tumor with very little exposure to
surrounding normal organs much less than standardradiation. We opened in twenty sixteen to

(01:10):
say no, we've treated over fortyfive hundred patients, so it's been a
great experience so far. That's fantastic. And what's the mission of the Maryland
Proton Treatment Center to be a regionalresource to cancer patients providing hope through excellence
and not only patient care, buteducation and research to advance the best possibility

(01:32):
of cure and outcomes for cancer patients. Great, thank you, And what
the impact do you think the MarylandProton Treatment Center has on the community?
Hope? Right for cancer? Forcancer patient, the biggest thing you provide
is hope, and by expanding theamount of the tools you have in the

(01:53):
cancer fighting toolbox, you give patientsmore hope. Right. So, prior
to us being here, if someonewanted proton therapy, you know, they
had to go across a couple ofstate lines. Now the closest center would
be in the middle of DC orin northern Virginia. And how treatments typically

(02:13):
are daily Monday through Friday for weeksat a time, so that can be
a big trek, okay. Andwhat's the relationship that you have with the
University of Maryland. Can you talkabout that for a minute. Yeah.
So we're on the University of Marylandcampus. We're totally integrated with the University
of Maryland Greenabound Cancer Center, whichis an NCI comprehensive cancer center. All

(02:36):
of the staff, faculty employees areUniversity of Maryland employees. So it's fully
integrated affiliated with the Greenabound Cancer Center, which again not only just to provide
proton there, but provides access toall of the expertise associated with the Greenabound
Cancer Center here in downtown Baltimore.Got it, and tell us a little

(02:57):
bit more, maybe going a littlemore depth about how prototherapy works and you
know, the types of cancer attreats and things like that. If you
don't mind, sure, So standardX ray therapy delivers radiation to the tumor,
but it continues to pass through thebody, so you can get you
do get additional dose exposure to anyorgan that's surrounding the tumor. And what

(03:21):
I tell people all the time,you know, I can cure all tumors
if I took it out of bodyand put it in a dish and just
radiated it. Challenging our specialty istumor sitting in the body. So you
could have a prostate cancer right thebladder and the rectum is there, you
have a breast cancer, your heartor your lungs are right underneath the breast
cancer, brain tumor sitting in themiddle brain. Protons, unlike X rays,

(03:43):
are charged particles. So what happensis it comes out of the machine
you can pick an energy, itgoes into the body and it doesn't deposit
that radiation exposure till it hits thetumor. And literally there's no additional radiation
dose past that tumor point, Soit dramatically reduces the amount of radiation exposure

(04:04):
to any of the surrounding organs thattypically can limit how much radiation we can
give. And if we're limited,that means less chance of getting rid of
the tumor or less chance of cure. God, which obviously is that's kind
of a huge benefits of road tilltoo, right, It's true. Well,
it's increasing, Yeah, increases thechance for cure by allowing more tumor

(04:25):
though. But the other important thing, we don't just want to cure cancer
patients, right, we want tocure them and not disrupt their quality of
life. So by decreasing that radiationexposure to the surrounding normal tuition and organs,
you also increase cure and decrease thechance of having both and acute side
effect during the treatment like painful swallowing, irritated blad or you know, the

(04:46):
diarrhea or things that hurt the organ, as well as any long term complications
from the treatment like damage to theheart that got exposed or to the lung
or to the brain. So it'stwo things. Increase the chance of dose
delivered for cure because you're delivering dosemore to the tumor, and decrease the
radiation exposure to surrounding organ so lesschance of doing any injury for the both

(05:11):
the short and long term for apatient and hopefully not disrupting their quality of
life. Got it, Well,why don't more people use proton therapy as
opposed to the standard. So ifyou think about who gets radiation when amongst
all patients who get diagnosed with cancer, sixty percent of patients get radiation some
part of their cancer treatment. Yeah, the X ray technology we have today

(05:38):
John is outstanding in about seventy ofthose patients that need radiations but for thirty
twenty to thirty percent of patients whoare treated by standard radiation protons is going
to be better and that so it'sit's a subset of the larger group,

(05:59):
So not everybody needs it, butit can be used across all types of
cancers, right, and brain tumors, head and neck tumors. You know,
we see a lot more now HPV, esophagus, breast cancers, lung
cancers, prostate cancers, So itcan be used in any type of cancer.

(06:19):
And again where the normal tissue issignificantly surrounding the tumor, protons offers
of potential significant benefit compared to standardradiation. Got it great? Thank you,
I appreciate you explaining that a littlebit more. And is that an
option for people who have previously beentreated for cancer, especially for those group

(06:43):
so interesting. Of the forty fivepatients we treated, almost twenty percent have
been previously radiant. So one ofthe cool things that's happening with somebody advances
in other parts of cancer therapy likeimune immunotherapy, patients are starting to live
longer. And what we've seen nowsome people are living longer and an area
that was previous an area of tumorthat was previously radiated can regrow. Well,

(07:06):
Remember they had previous radiation, andthat means the normal tissue around or
the organ around that area had alsobeen previously exposed. Those patients in particular,
can benefit from proton therapy by decreasing, you know, any additional exposure
to an organ that's already had radiationexposure. That's great, that's great.

(07:27):
And is that also available for childrenas well as adults? Yeah, oh
yeah, especially for kids, right, Kids, since their tissue is growing,
they're especially sensitive to radiation. Soit's a it's not only a standard
recommendation, it should be a firstchoice in the vast majority kids who may

(07:47):
need radiation. But you know,the National Cancer Network recommendations, Comprehensive Cancer
Network recommendation that especially in young adultsforty or younger who have you know,
many many years to live on.Now that I'm getting older, I would
change that age to a little higher, hopefully you're sixty, because if that
radiation exposure can leave you at riskfor all kinds of injuries later on in

(08:11):
life, including developing a radiation inducedcancer from exposure of an oregan So young
adults, kids, especially beneficial toget proton therapy at least get evaluated for
that. Great, thank you,appreciate you sharing that. So switch scares
a little bit. Tell us alittle bit about your your personal background and

(08:33):
how you got to this point inyour career. Yeah. Look, I
was all set to go into orthopedicsports medicine, and uh, you know,
I ended up getting a little tusslewith somebody playing basketball and he told
me about radiation on college and Ihad no idea what it was. I
had a physics background, the chemistrybackground. I love the fact that I

(08:54):
was taking care patients who really couldn'tget better without my help, and it
was a serious thing. And soI, you know, did my training
up in Philly at Jefferson and myfirst shot was at Saint Jude and I
got focused on brain tumors and thenI went on to eventually become chairman here.
My special interest especially interests our brainGI malignancies and head and neck and

(09:18):
sarcomas. So it's it's been,it's been phenomenal. And I really enjoy
being in Baltimore and part of theUniverse Diversity Meddle in Greenabound Cancer Center because
of all the expertise. I getto surround myself with which means I gets
to offer to patients that I takecare of. Well, we're glad you're
here too, So thank you.Um So, I like to talk about

(09:41):
leadership on the show. How wouldyou describe your leadership style? I would
say servant and team oriented. Thatwas really a centered focus on patient experience.
I'm really proud patients come to ourfacility and they just you know,
from the second day arrived, there'sfree valet parking, someone will escort them

(10:03):
through the whole experience and our youknow, I get comments weekly. Your
staff is unbelievable. For all thechallenges and toughness and things were going through,
they always do it with a smileand a great attitude. And that's
my job is to make sure Ido all I can just to appreciate the
staff and lead by example in doingthat in terms of caring for patients.
That's great. Thank you appreciate yoursharing that, um with You know,

(10:26):
the general threat of the pandemic behindus. You know, if you were
to look back over the past fewyears, you know, what what do
you what did you learn about kindof managing and leading people through through that
time. Yeah, so you know, it's in our nature, you know,
as healthcare providers is pretty wasn't toohard to essentially keep our focus on

(10:50):
the patient, right, And bykeeping the focus on the patient, it
was easy to get a great sourceof inspiration and motivation to work through most
any of the challenging times that wereassociated with COVID. Yeah, well you
got how tougher was for them.It's a lot tougher for them, right.
Yeah. I was gonna say,in the in your industry, wow,
I mean you had you and yourteam and you know, everyone involved

(11:13):
in the healthcare industry had a reallytough time. So it's it's you know,
how do you how do you keepthat you know, morale up and
culture positive when you're going through sucha you know, a tough time.
Was there anything you kind of learnedaround that? Yeah, like not loose
the importance of not only creating ayou know, a team building environment,

(11:35):
but a team of appreciation, whetherit's through and when we got back together,
advanced you know, advanced uh,you know, social gatherings, uh,
and and living by the basic mantra. I always tell people, Look,
if we take care of the teamand the staff, the team will
and the staff will take care ofthe patience. Yeah, and we always
you know, we keep that frontof mine all the time here. Yeah,

(11:56):
that's great. I love that,um from from a labor perspective,
you know, with the you know, obviously the fear or the guts of
the pandemic kind of behind us.What are you finding it difficult to find
qualify people wanting to get into thehealthcare field, especially with the maritald proton
treatment center or or no are youare you seeing? Yeah? Look,

(12:20):
I think it's just I think,look, I think people like being part
of something that's unique end or special. Right, So we are the only
center in the state. We're doingstuff that's cutting edge. They loved all
of the cool research and education thingswe put. People come from around the
world country to get educated here aboutusing protons and being in that environment is

(12:43):
a pretty cool thing. I wouldsay that helps us, I think relatively
easily compared to other folks. Youknow, always attract high end talent and
people who want to be part ofthe group. And then again it goes
back. We we are so focusedon keeping what I describe as a team
or family working atmosphere here, soeverybody takes care of each other and looks

(13:03):
out for each other. That's great. That's great. So what gets excited
about the future of the Maryland ProtonTreatment Center? Yeah, I would say
a lot of the cutting edge researchyou're working on, right, do you
know as how to marry that upwith some of the other advances in cancer
kiss. So we're doing some coolstuff. We do research within the center.
We have like a dedicated bunk orwhere we do research on cells.

(13:26):
And what we're seeing is that whenyou combine proton therapy with things like hyperthermia.
We're only center in the East Coastright now that has what we call
a hyperthermia unit that can be coupledwith protons, and what that is is
heating tumors to a low grade fevertemperature like one hundred and two degrees,
which dramatically enhances the effectiveness of radiationand proton therapy. The other thing is

(13:50):
when we combined it with immunotherapy,right, that's the big advance outside of
radiation. We're seeing dramatic enhancement ofthe immunotherapy effectiveness in getting ramped up to
take care of any of those cellsthat are beyond what the radiation is trying
to treat, so you're not onlytreating the tumor, but any cells that
are trying to escape elsewhere in thebody. So it's pretty exciting, cool

(14:13):
cutting edge research. Yeah, that'spretty neat. That's really cool. What
about kind of conversely, what kindof keeps up at night? I would
say probably thinking about what else wecan do to you know, and not
only advanced the research, but createaccess for patient One of the things we

(14:37):
struggle. We're full, right,So one of the things we struggle people
come from a distance and they haveto stay weeks at a time. So
we have something called the you've probablyheard of Mary Canciety Hope Lodge, like
two blocks from the center, thathas a two week waiting list, has
twenty six rooms currently free to patientsto stay during this day. So figuring

(14:58):
out how expand that and I'm partof now a ten million dollar fundraising campaign.
Nice, very graciously University has agreedthat once we hit the ten million
mark we're about seven right now,they're going to give us a new building
directly across the street, which willgo from twenty six rooms to thirty four
rooms, So a dramatic increase incapacity. So I feel like we've addressed

(15:22):
that big challenge right now because youknow, when we treat patients, we
treat them for days, you know, five days a week and it can
be three, four or five weeks. That's a big ticket if you have
to stay at a hotel because youknow, we're treating patients from all over
the state, out of the state, and you know, you got to
have a place for them to stay. And that's that's something that was definitely
on my mind. Hey, oneother thing when you asked me about that,

(15:45):
I think one of the challenges ofother people who have proton centers,
and it's is unique. One thing. First thing is people well ask is
hey, does this uncovered? Isthis covered by insurance? So we're only
one of three proton centers in thecountry where the cost of proton therapy is
new cost neutral to standard radiation,and because of that, we have an

(16:07):
over a ninety one percent insurance approvalrate proton therapy. So that's not typically
not an issue at out of centerother centers, where proton therapy can cost
two to three times more standard radiation, that can be a real big issue.
Gold you brought that up. That'sa, that's a really important issue.
And and yeah, and good luckon the fundraising too. It sounds

(16:30):
like you're pretty close to that goaland I'm sure you're going to reach it.
So that's fantastic to hear they'll havemore capacity. Um. Well,
to wrap things up, is thereanything else you'd like our listeners to know
about you in the Maryland Proton TreatmentCenter. Yeah, Look, I think
the best way to find out ifproton therapy is a potential help for a
patient is get evaluated by us.See get a consultation, because we're the

(16:53):
ones, we're the only ones inthe regions. We deliver it here in
the Maryland area and you know wewell, I'm also proud about again being
patient centered. If you make acall, we will see you within forty
eight to seventy two hours of yourphone call, as long as you got
your medical records. Who are goodto go. So you're not just you
know, you're just not a numberfor us. It's like being part of

(17:15):
our family and we want to youto understand that our team. Is therefore
you ready to go? Yeah?Well, thank you, doctor Regina.
And how can we find more informationabout the Maryland Proton Treatment Center. Yeah,
schedule console visit. You can goon the website and look out at
ask for Protons dot com, oryou can call us at four one zero

(17:36):
three six nine fifty two hundred.Well. Great social media platforms we're on
as well, so go ahead,Okay, great. Well, I just
wanted to thank you. I reallyappreciate everything that you do for us in
the community in regard to this,and um, I really appreciate you taking
the time today to talk with usand have our listeners learn more about the
Maryland Proton Treatment Center. So thankyou so much. Well, I appreciate

(17:59):
you have me and thanks. Thanksand you will be well. Call anytime
we can help. This has beeniheartmedias CEOs you should know.