09-05-2025
Pella Regional, Knoxville Hospital break ground on cancer treatment facility
PELLA — Pella Regional Medical Center and Knoxville Hospital and Clinics broke ground on a project to bring improved cancer treatment to Marion County.
Members of the hospitals and community celebrated the beginning of construction on the new South Central Iowa Radiation Center at the Pella Regional campus Thursday. According to Pella Regional CEO Bob Kroese, the project came as a collaboration built on a mutual need for patients in both communities, and in Marion County as a whole.
"It's kind of a first of its kind," Kroese said. "But when we both realized — both of our organizations realized — there was something we wanted to do desperately for our communities is to bring the radiation therapy to our community, and we both found out we were interested in doing it, we decided to talk it over with each other and decided … maybe if we do one united front, it will serve that large patient population even more effectively and really reduce the travel times for people that need that care."
The 7,800-square-foot facility is budgeted at $14 million, and is expected to include diagnostic tools and treatment technologies like a TrueBeam linear accelerator to deliver radiation treatments and a combined Biograph Trinion PET/CT unit for diagnosing cancer and determining course of treatment.
Iowa has the second highest cancer rates in the United States and a according to Kroese, the new center will play a major role in fighting the issue locally.
"It's very, very unfortunate that our cancer incidences are as high as they are, but it's up to us professionally through our missions to be able to provide very, very, high quality … of care, but also do whatever we can to reduce the burden of travel," Kroese said. "If we do that, we're fulfilling our mission and providing a great service for this area."
Knoxville Hospital and Clinics CEO Kevin Kincaid reflected this when speaking at the groundbreaking, stressing the importance of nearby care and reduced travel.
"And we all know that when you're able to deliver care — especially around cancer — locally, what we're giving people back is the biggest gift at all when you're talking about cancer, and that's time," he said. "So that's what we're interested in, and that's what we're going to do."
The new radiation and oncology center is expected to be opened in 2027.
