{"id":664331,"date":"2026-11-02T07:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T07:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/664331\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T07:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T07:12:27","slug":"shaw-cancer-center-celebrates-25-years-of-prioritizing-the-whole-patient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/664331\/","title":{"rendered":"Shaw Cancer Center celebrates 25 years of prioritizing the whole patient\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard and Mary Louise Shaw already played a large role in Eagle County when they approached their doctor, Jack Eck, about what they could do for the community. After losing their son to a car accident on Vail Pass, the Shaws contributed to Vail Health Hospital\u2019s growth by donating funds for a new wing and serving on the hospital board. However, they wanted to do more, so Dr. Eck pointed them to cancer care in the valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time, the number of cancer patients was rising in the valley, but there was nowhere to go between Denver and Salt Lake City. In 2001, the Shaw Cancer Center opened with the aid of a $17 million contribution from the Shaw family. Twenty-five years later, the center has made significant progress as a high-quality practice in the Central Rockies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The center offers a vast range of services<\/a> for oncology care \u2014 screenings, therapies, surgeries, support groups, coordination of appointments, and counseling, to name a few. The center has received a gold accreditation from the Commission on Cancer, which is the highest recognition for quality of care from the professional organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kim Sharkey, the director of oncology operations, has been at Shaw for 15 years and said that in the early years of the center, they introduced a \u201cwhole-person\u201d approach to care, a healthcare model that looks beyond isolated symptoms, treating a person as a complete individual. Included in their care are services like dietitians, psychosocial support and an exercise clinic \u2014 something that Sharkey said is not in standard practice with cancer care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe like to think as a community cancer center, we are leading \u2026 across the country with some innovation,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The center has offered different ways patients can access cancer care. In 2007, the center introduced Jack\u2019s Place, a cancer lodging house, after finding that many patients were sleeping in their cars to be near the center during treatment. In 2023, the center also started offering Shaw at Home, which brings treatment services to patients\u2019 homes since many are too sick to go to the center itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always maintained the patient-centered care, the whole-person approach. Every person that walks through our cancer center is so important to us and all the decisions we make every day revolve around our patients, and we\u2019ve never lost sight of that,\u201d Sharkey said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And cancer treatment isn\u2019t the only thing the center offers. Shaw is also a community infusion center. According to Sharkey, 30% of the center\u2019s patients who come in for infusions come for noncancer treatments like multiple sclerosis. Shaw also has a high-risk program for people who haven\u2019t been diagnosed with cancer but who have family history or genetic predisposition. Their medical oncology team also sees hematology patients, Sharkey said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unusual that in a cancer center we have so many things under one roof,\u201d said Karen Clous, who has been a registered nurse with Shaw for 15 years. \u201cI think that\u2019s what really makes Shaw special.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clous said that recruiting staff to the area hasn\u2019t been easy, but over recent years the center has been able to provide in-house training to staff in an effort to expand what it can offer, rather than just sending patients to a Denver hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One example is offering byspecific antibody treatment \u2014 an infusion treatment that targets a patient\u2019s immune system like a vaccine to target the tumor. However, it can cause side effects like infections or multisystem shutdowns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the past, it has been offered in an inpatient setting where specialists can help care for the patient who might experience reactions to the treatment. In the last year, they\u2019ve been able to develop a program to offer that care at Shaw.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re one of the first cancer centers in an outpatient center to offer this treatment outside of a hospital, which is great for our patients,\u201d Clous said. \u201cWe\u2019re always trying to look at how we can keep our patients within our community (and) keep them close to our support services and their own home.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A tumor board meeting at the Shaw Cancer Center. Tumor boards are weekly multidisciplinary discussions among the center\u2019s staff to review patient cases, evaluate diagnoses and develop treatment plans, according to the center\u2019s website.Chris Dillmann\/Vail Daily<\/p>\n

Clous and Sharkey have been a part of Shaw Cancer Center for a majority of its life. However, Dr. Benjamin Hopkins has only just started in his role as a radiation oncologist, but can see just how much is poured into making the facility the best it can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEarly in my training, I had no idea that you could have a center like this,\u201d he said. In his work, Hopkins has witnessed small centers that are stripped down, struggling to keep staff on or not being able to offer enough services for patients. Shaw, he said, has the same equipment, and even stronger staff and coordination of care than the universities he went to in California and Georgia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very confident coming here that I could do everything that I could possibly want for my patients, and that they weren\u2019t \u2026 missing out on anything, which I think is amazing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopkins said it\u2019s unique for the center to have such strong coordination for every patient. He credits Dr. Patricia Hardenbergh and Dr. Alexander Urquhart, who have spent lots of time engaging with the community and raising funds to expand their efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The center also has a robust research program which enables the center to work on the latest clinical trials, Hopkins said. Hardenbergh has even designed her own clinical trials, which Hopkins said he\u2019s never seen a community center having.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I look at what this place has done in 25 years, I think a lot of people would say it\u2019s impossible to do what they\u2019ve done,\u201d he said. \u201cI think our patients really get the experience that I would want my family members to have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howard and Mary Louise Shaw already played a large role in Eagle County when they approached their doctor,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-664331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}