Rotary Club of Santa Maria South club members with Mission Hope Medical Director, Robert A. Dichman M. D. (3rd from left)
 
Tuesday, August 2nd found Rotary Santa Maria South members and guest treated to an overview and tour of Mission Hope Cancer Center, the state-of-the-art facility designed to offer Central Coast cancer patients the latest treatments, advanced technology, sophisticated imaging, coordinated care and support services, as well as clinical trials and physicians from the nation's top medical schools. A one-of-a-kind center serving as a nexus for testing, diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiation, and after treatment support, Mission Hope is comparable only to the centralized cancer services found at sites such as UCLA, or Stanford. Mission Hope is a UCLA affiliated cancer center featuring 30 currently active clinical trails/ study drugs, and is the first non-academic center to boast the Varian Truebeam linear accelerator, a $2.5 million piece of equipment enabling high precision radiation, which is less damaging to patients. In addition to cutting edge equipment, Mission Hope has now recruited two new physicians, Christopher Lutman, M. D., a gynecological oncologist, and Cheryl Decker, M. D., FACEP, cancer risk and survivorship.