Cancer Care Northwest PS, a prominent Spokane-area cancer-treatment provider, says it plans to expand its Spokane Valley presence with a new 20,000-square-foot center to be built near Valley Hospital & Medical Center.

Warren Benincosa, Cancer Care Northwest's CEO, says the practice also will expand its services in the new building, to be called the Cancer Care Northwest Valley Center.

Benincosa says 42 employees and eight providers will be based at the Valley center, up from a staff of 35 now, plus four physicians and a nurse practitioner, at its current Valley office. Some of the additions to the current staff and physicians at the planned Valley center will come from Cancer Care Northwest's three other locations, he says.

"We hope to recruit another physician or two, and they'll need some staff," Benincosa says. "Minimally, we will hire four to six new employees."

Cancer Care Northwest has 180 employees in addition to its 20 physicians, 17 of whom are partners in the practice.

The project site is on a 5.4-acre parcel at 1204 N. Vercler, southeast of Valley Hospital. The practice expects to break ground on the building next spring and move its Valley operations there in the fall of 2012, Benincosa says. That Valley office currently is located in a 10,000-square-foot space at 12615 E. Mission, just north of Valley Hospital.

The construction budget is $5.5 million, Benincosa says. Cancer Care Northwest also will invest more than $3 million in new equipment at the site, he says. The equipment will include new linear accelerator and a computed tomography machine, also known as a CT scanner.

The linear accelerator alone will cost about $2.5 million, and the CT scanner will cost another $500,000, Benincosa says.

The linear accelerator is used in radiation therapy to aim high-energy X-ray beams at certain cancerous tissues in an attempt to prevent them from growing and reproducing. A CT scanner is an imaging machine that uses X-rays to take cross-section images, called slices, that its software can stack together to create 3-D images.

Benincosa says Cancer Care Northwest will add radiation oncology and increase its surgical oncology services at the new Valley location.

It provides medical and some surgical oncology and other cancer-patient support services at the current Valley location.

With the added services, patients ideally could see all of their oncology providers and coordinate radiology, surgery, and chemotherapy in one visit, Benincosa says.

Cancer Care Northwest provides surgical, radiation, and medical oncology, among other services at its flagship clinic, which it calls its South Spokane clinic, at 601 S. Sherman, and at its North Side clinic in the Northpointe Office Building, at 605 E. Holland.

The practice also operates a clinic in the Deaconess Health Education Center, at 910 W. Fifth, where it provides radiation oncology, endocrinology, and imaging services.

Cancer Care Northwest also has outreach clinics for follow-up care and limited chemotherapy in Chewelah, Colville, Moses Lake, Ritzville, Davenport, Grand Coulee, and Newport.

The practice hasn't selected a contractor for the Valley project yet. Spokane-based Blue Room Architecture & Design PS designed it.

The practice will own the planned building, Benincosa says.

Cancer Care Northwest also owns the 24,000-square-foot building that houses the South Spokane clinic.

"We're tight in that building," he says. "There's no room for growth there."

While the center on Sherman is filled to capacity, the practice envisions expanding it in the future. Toward that end, Cancer Care Northwest also has bought and recently demolished two vacant houses on Sheridan Street, which are across Sheridan behind the South Spokane office.

"We did that for two reasons," Benincosa says. "We didn't like having boarded-up houses close to our building, and we did have some thought of expanding and would need the extra space for parking."

Cancer Care Northwest leases its other clinic space as well as its administrative offices, which occupy 6,400 square feet of space at 5105 E. Third, where Benincosa is based.

Cancer Care Northwest, a 35-year-old practice broke away from The Woodlands, Texas-based U.S. Oncology Inc. in 2000. The practice has remained independent since then, even as some other formerly independent medical providers here have aligned with either the Spokane-based Providence Health Care network, or Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems Inc.

CHS, a for-profit corporation, bought Empire Health Services and its assets, including Valley Hospital and Deaconess Medical Center in 2008. More recently, CHS bought Rockwood Clinic, a longtime Spokane-based multi-specialty medical practice. CHS also formed an affiliate network last year that acquired Spokane-based Inland Cardiology Associates PS and moved its main Spokane office to the Deaconess campus.

The nonprofit Providence network includes Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children's Hospital, Providence Holy Family Hospital, here, and two other hospitals, laboratories, physician clinics, and other facilities throughout Eastern Washington.

Last year, Providence bought out Spokane-based heart doctor groups Spokane Cardiology PS and Heart Clinics Northwest PS, and Providence's physician division merged with Inland Orthopaedics PS, of Spokane, to become Providence Inland Orthopaedics.

As for Cancer Care Northwest's future growth, Benincosa says the practice might consider joint operations with Providence and CHS in the future, although the practice isn't past the talking stage with the larger health systems yet.

"We want to be here for the community," Benincosa says. "We don't want to take sides."