The idea of a Radiotherapy Center at Memorial Hospital began in about 1966 with the recommendations of a panel appointed by the Board of Managers that " . . . programs of radiation therapy in the Memorial Center and in the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center be coordinated; that the administration of radiation therapy be restricted to radiotherapists and that they have clinical responsibility for patient having radiation therapy; that policies as to modality of treatment be determined through joint decisions of the departments of medicine, surgery, pediatrics and radiation therapy." The implementation of these recommendations is described and their extension to cooperating community hospitals in a regional radiotherapy program is outlined. The prospects of further progress in radiation therapy, based on the triad of patient care, teaching and research; now seem assured.
HERE ARE SEVERAL MAJOR CANCER HOSPI-
T tals in the United States; each has a iadiotherapy department, but I doubt that there is one which could be called a radiotherapy center in the sense that it performs :I 11 the functions we have heard discussed today. In the many large medical centers in this country, which necessarily receive many patients with cancer, the provisions for radiotherapy may be excellent, but in them also the concept of a radiotherapy center is still only in the germinal stage.
We have to acknowledge that there are medical centers and university hospitals in which insufficient attention is being given to radiotherapy. There is a lack of published tlata for the planning of new facilities for r;tdiotherapy or for the improvement of existing facilities, although a lot of such data must have been accumulated by individual hospital administrators and radiologists. For these reasons it seemed pertinent to give an outline of the current work of our radiotherapy department at Memorial Hospital and of our plans for making it a radiotherapy center in the full sense of the term.
BACKGROUND
Memorial Hospital has been a cancer center for a long time, but the concept of a