Southlake - Building the Regional Cancer Program

Regional Cancer Program

On March 15, 2010, our region’s most important healthcare facility - the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre, the centrepiece of Southlake's Regional Cancer Program at Southlake - opened and began providing care close to home for thousands of cancer patients. As a friend and donor to Southlake, you can proudly say that you were a part of making that happen.

The Regional Cancer Program provides cancer screening, diagnostic services, supportive care, out-patient and in-patient care, and for the first time in this region, radiation treatment is available to the residents of York Region and south Simcoe County. The Stronach Regional Cancer Centre will accommodate 100,000 out-patient visits in a few short years, and will provide radiation treatment to 1,250 patients in its first year. It features an expanded 23-chair chemotherapy unit, two out-patient clinics, designated space for clinical drug trials and three radiation treatment rooms, with four additional rooms roughed in to accommodate the anticipated growth.

Our cancer care team has been able to plan for the most advanced diagnostic and treatment technologies available. Each radiation treatment room is equipped with Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) and Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT) technologies, both considered the gold standard in radiation equipment today. This sophisticated equipment will enable the healthcare team to more accurately target the area requiring treatment. For patients, it will mean that their individual treatment will take significantly less time, and their risk of experiencing side-effects will be reduced. Impressively, Southlake is among the first in Ontario to utilize VMAT-enabled technology.

With construction of the Stronach Regional Cancer Centre complete, we are now focused on equipping the building with both the advanced technologies and the patient comfort resources we need to keep our promise of excellent care to those who will come to us with such hope.

As our population ages and grows by about 25,000 residents a year, so too, will the incidence of cancer. By 2014, our region could see a 40% increase in the number of new cancer diagnoses - as many as 4,500 new cases a year. When the life of a loved one hangs in the balance, we all want to know that our healthcare team can perform miracles. At Southlake, our cancer care team does that every day.

You can help us save more lives. Among the priorities to better serve the needs of Southlake cancer patients:

With the support of our community, we will build a one-of-a-kind Cancer Urgent Care Clinic so that patients experiencing complications between scheduled appointments can have emergency access to specialized care and support.
In the last four years alone, demand for image-guided, minimally-invasive procedures in Southlake's Interventional Radiology Suite has more than doubled, and the number of cancer patients and complexity of their needs is expected to grow even further. Southlake urgently needs more space and new technologies to keep pace with a growing and often emergency patient load. Community support will help replace the existing outdated equipment with the latest imaging technologies and create a new, fully-equipped angiography room for complex care and ultrasound-guided procedures.
Southlake has emerged as a leader in thoacic surgery in Canada, and in 2010, was designated a Regional Thoracic Program. To maintain our leading edge, we must focus on expanding this program, diagnosing patients faster and improving our capacity to establish the stage of disease - all this leading to the best possible outcoem for our patients. With community support, and as Ministry approvals are obtained, we will look towards the most appropriate advanced imaging technology, including Positron Emission Testing (PET) or MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), to achieve maximum quality of care for our patients.

Southlake Regional Health Centre was built on the support of those who share our belief that patients and their families need and deserve hope, comfort and leading-edge care. Please join us now in continuing to deliver the best advanced care, right within our own community. We hope you will help us with a gift that will literally help to transform the lives of thousands of hopeful cancer patients, with every penny staying in our community.

"From the first day I walked through the door at Southlake, I felt like everyone just wrapped their arms around me. I am just so grateful for having had access to such excellent care from such a compassionate team”.

Jayne Greer, Southlake Cancer Survivor

Read Jane's Story

With your generous donation today, we can guarantee that Jayne’s experience of advanced and compassionate cancer care will be the standard for the thousands of cancer patients who will walk through the doors of the Regional Cancer Program at Southlake.

Please join our community of donors who are standing shoulder to shoulder to support them.

How You Can Help

Make a donation to the Southlake Regional Health Centre