The threat of rising cancer cases in the future statewide has prompted the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) to plan for a new cancer hospital in downtown Charleston.
Before it opens by 2030, MUSC will apply to have the hospital certified as one of the nation’s top-tier comprehensive cancer-care and research facilities so that South Carolinians won’t need to seek advanced treatment elsewhere, said Dr. Patrick Cawley, CEO of MUSC Health.
MUSC’s emphasis on cancer, Cawley said in an interview, began a year ago because of a significant rise in cancer cases as new cancer therapies emerged. That has already led to a planned MUSC cancer hospital in Florence. It is expected to open in the fall of 2027.
“We are doing many of these things at MUSC, and we think more of them need to be available across the state,” he added.
But what about potential federal cuts?
The university’s focus on cancer care, research and prevention coincides, however, with possible federal government funding cuts for medical research through the National Institute of Health (NIH). In fiscal year 2024, MUSC received $137.1 million in NIH funding for research.
“We really don’t know the impacts” those cuts might pose, Cawley said. “Our state and federal legislators are strongly advocating for our research priorities to improve patient health. We remain optimistic that cancer-related grant funding will continue to come through.”
Potential funding cuts, he explained, are not expected to affect the university’s hospitals, which operate from patient revenue.
Possible cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, aren’t expected to affect services in MUSC’s cancer clinics, said Dr. Raymond N. DuBois, director of the Hollings Cancer Center. “We are the place where a lot of people in this situation would come, and we are not going to turn people away,” he said.
MUSC is expected to finish a feasibility study for the new Charleston hospital in three to six months, Cawley said. The MUSC board of trustees recently approved the new hospital that will be built on Sabin Street next to the Rutledge Tower and a short walk from the Hollings center.
Cawley was reluctant to estimate how much the new hospital will cost “because more and more cancer treatment can be done outside the hospital and that will play into how we build it and how much it will cost.”
DuBois said about 33,000 South Carolinians annually are diagnosed with cancer. The disease kills about 10,000 to 11,000 of them each year, he added.
About 13% of the new cancer patients travel to other states for cancer care, Cawley said. That means, he said, that 85%t of them will not receive cutting-edge therapies, “if we don’t make them available for the rest of the people.”
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) classifies MUSC as a clinical cancer center, one step below the top rank as a comprehensive cancer center.
In 2028, the university plans for the first time to apply for the higher ranking, Cawley said. If the state’s new budget is approved, MUSC will receive $15 million to help it prepare for a rigorous NCI inspection and potentially more agency funding.
The NCI designation would be the first for South Carolina. There are 57 NCI comprehensive cancer centers in 37 states, including North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
DuBois said the new hospital will boost the center’s clinical space by 276,000-square-feet, the size of nearly four football fields.
The increased space brings more room for research labs and patient services, he said.
“It will put everything under one roof so we will have all the in-patient, out-patient services and imaging, pathology and all the things that cancer patients need to get done to get their treatment plan and treatments, surgical, medical and radiation therapy.”
Rising cancer cases
The top three fatal cancers in the state and in the tri-county are lung-related, prostate and female breast, according to the S.C. Department of Public Health (DPH).
While MUSC officials said the state’s cancer rate is increasing, DPH reports that fewer people are dying from it.
“Mortality rates for all cancers and the top three have mostly decreased over the past five years of data (2018 to 2022) for the state … and for Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties,” according to DPH.
MUSC is projecting, however, that cancer rates could rise because of the state’s aging population and the influx of older people moving to the state.
“This will very likely lead to increased cancer cases in the future,” he said. “We need to plan for that increase now.”
Plans for a new hospital also take into consideration that not all South Carolinians, especially residents in rural and underserved areas, are not being appropriately screened for cancer, he said.
“That will increase our cancer burden, and we have a good cancer burden already for a state of about 5 million people,” he said.
But on the other end of the age spectrum, people younger than 45 are also being diagnosed with cancer due to a number of factors, DuBois said. Colorectal and other cancers are going up in younger people, he said.
“Part of it is [due] to a much higher percentage of obesity in the younger population,” DuBois explained. Exercise and other healthy behaviors, he said, “aren’t as prevalent as they were two or three decades ago. So that is increasing their risk.”
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