Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Opens New Bigger, Brighter Infusion Clinic for Cancer Patients

Wesley Falatoonzadeh, a Kaiser Permanente oncology nurse, donned a blue chemotherapy gown this week and carefully prepped a syringe of bortezomib, a targeted cancer drug used to treat Barbara Coe’s multiple myeloma.

Falatoonzadeh sat next to the 71-year-old Occidental resident, and the two inevitably began discussing gardening and sunlight. For years, Coe worked as the supervising park curator at Luther Burbank Home & Gardens.

“Are you comfortable,” Falatoonzadeh asked.

“The real question is, ‘Are you comfortable?’” Coe replied as she settled into her chair at one of the infusion bays at Kaiser’s newly expanded infusion clinic in Santa Rosa.

A few years ago, before Kaiser started work on its new infusion clinic, oncology nurses, pharmacists and medical assistants worked in a cramped space on the north end of Kaiser’s MOB 1 office building on Bicentennial Way. Infusions were also conducted in other locations at the Kaiser complex.

The whole of Kaiser’s infusion services were scattered in four locations, and the compounding pharmacy (a special, sterilized pharmacy where individualized medications can be custom-made) was run out of shared space in the nearby hospital tower.

Last week, Kaiser held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completed expansion and consolidation of its oncology infusion services, a project that started about four and a half years ago.

Michael Scheuer, Kaiser’s operations manager in Santa Rosa, said bringing infusion services into one dedicated location is good for patients and medical staff as well.

“It creates a better sense of team (for staff),” Scheuer said last week, shortly before the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “Also, our patients who come here frequently, it’s kind of a small community, so rather than be segregated from each other, they’re happy to see each other regularly.”

The expansion brings the total number of infusion bays, where cancer drug treatments are administered, from 21 to 34, all under one roof, giving patients easier access to treatments across multiple medical specialties. The nearby new compounding pharmacy, which quadrupled in size, allows medical staff faster and more efficient access to medications, reducing the wait time for patients.

To make way for the expansion, Kaiser relocated its family medicine wing to a second-floor space in Medical Office Building 2. That space was vacated by Kaiser’s dermatology center, which moved Kaiser offices on Mercury Way in southwest Santa Rosa.

The entire infusion clinic expansion project, including moving family medicine to MOB 2, cost about $18 million, according to Kaiser officials.

The age-adjusted incidence rate for cancer in Sonoma County is 436 per 100,000 people. That’s slightly lower than the national rate of 444 but higher than California’s overall rate of 397 per 100,000 population, according to the data from the National Cancer Institute.

The institute lists Sonoma County’s “recent trend” as stable for the period between 2017 and 2021.

According to county epidemiologist Jenny Mercado, lung cancer death rate decreased for men and women in Sonoma County from 2000-2002 to 2021-2023, with the fatality rate for men higher than for women.

Breast cancer rates for women have remain steady over the past two decades; prostate cancer rates have decreased in the past 10 years; and colorectal cancer rates have decreased in the past two decades, according to rates analyzed by Mercado.

Kent Corley, executive director of the North Bay Cancer Alliance, which provides assistance to cancer patients at hospitals and oncology centers in Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties, said consolidating services is a good idea for patients.

“There is a camaraderie that the patients have, with some of them syncing treatment at the same time, same days of the week,” Corley said.

Corley said that one of the biggest problems these days is getting patients from remote locations in the county to treatment centers in the county’s central core.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday morning, when Coe received her treatment, nearly every infusion bay was in use. Sunlight flooded each patient bay, softened by half-frosted windows all along the clinic’s east facing wall.

Coe, who was diagnosed with cancer when she was 52, said she’s received great care over the years from her oncology physician Dr. Nicolaj Andersen.

She said she received a stem cell transplant in her mid-50s and was free of cancer for more than a decade. During that period she declined anymore chemotherapy

“I had 12 years free, which is almost unheard of and Dr. Andersen was pretty excited,” she said. “As as he looks back, he says, ‘I would never have known that any myeloma patient could could get through without the maintenance. ... So, he’s thanked me.”

Coe is one of about 12 local cancer patients who form Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa’s Cencer Peer Mentor program. The program was created in response to calls for more emotional support for patients living with cancer.

The new infusion center, Coe said, benefits both cancer patients and staff, creating a calmer, less stressful environment.

“At the old center, everything was so crowded,” she said. “The oncology pharmacists — I would see them reaching over each other to grab things, supplies. It was so crammed, it was tiny.”

Coe acknowledged that for “very, very ill” cancer patients, a brighter, more spacious cancer infusion center won’t make them feel “more cheerful.” But it will make a difference for many, she said.

“For those of us that are in a little bit better place medically, it means that we're not dreading coming in here,” she said. “We have less fear.”