The law will benefit Woodwinds Health Campus in Woodbury, Minn., part of St. Paul-based HealthEast Care System, which has wanted to move a sister hospital’s chemotherapy equipment for years. However, the system was prohibited from doing so by a moratorium set in 2007 on building and relocating radiation treatment centers in the Twin Cities area.
The new law allows Woodwinds an exception under the moratorium, which will be lifted in 2014. Woodwinds will be able to move radiation equipment from St. John’s Hospital, which is also part of HealthEast, to the Woodwinds campus.
The moratorium was designed to prevent rising costs from overbuilding radiation therapy facilities. In 2014, the new law will replace the ban with restrictions on the growth of future radiation treatment centers. Specifically, the law will require radiation centers to be affiliated with a hospital, physicians to disclose financial interests in radiation facilities and no new centers to be built within seven miles of an existing one, according to the report. The law will also spend $137,000 to study radiation therapy centers’ capacity, according to the report.
The law is a compromise between Minnesota Radiation Oncology, a physician group that supported the ban, and Minnesota Oncology, whose planned Woodbury radiation center partly spurred legislators to issue the moratorium.
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