What are some alternatives to Cancer Treatment Centers of America?
My co-worker’s brother has cancer, and Cancer Treatment Centers of America is not accepted by his insurance. What other options are available?
My Co-worker’s brother has cancer, and his insurance does not accept Cancer Treatment Centers of America. He lives in Virginia, but somewhere in North Carolina should be ok also. Thank you so much.
Anywhere would be an alternative. This is a private for profit organization that has been in trouble with the FTC for false and unsubstantiated claims. I am not aware of any other hospital that has had this problem.
I work for various hospitals throughout Los Angeles County and we have several well-known hospitals here where people come from all over the world for treatment and there are many less known community hospitals that give care that is just as good and in some cases better than these well known hospitals.
The best advice I can give to your co-workers brother is to be an informed consumer. He and a trusted friend or family member should learn as much about his disease as possible so that he can ask good questions and make informed decisions. Get opinions from 2 or 3 oncologists that do not practice together. Someone should go with him to all appointments where test results or treatment options are discussed. Keep a running list of any questions he thinks of and take the list with him to his doctors appointments.
Unless he has an unusual cancer he should get very good treatment at a hospital his insurance is contracted with. He may also want to check with the American College of Surgeons for hospitals in his area with approved cancer programs. They are responsible for accrediting hospital cancer programs in the United States.
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Well, there is the "usual" treatment and whatevers offered by the common physicians, but I have reason to believe CTCA gives the most hope and best care in almost every instance.
Contact them and ask about alternative funding.
Nothing to lose by calling.
References :
First off, there are no secret cancer treatments that are only available at CTCA so when looking for a cancer treatment facility you want the best hospital for your particular cancer that happens to be located near your home. Traveling long distances repeatedly when you are not feeling good gets old (and very expensive in out of pocket cash) real fast so you need to figure into the equation what degree of difficulty you will have making repeated trips to whatever facility you end up choosing.
Cancer Treatment Centers of America are private for profit hospitals that make certain you have the money to pay for their services. While they have modern facilities they are by no means able to offer all the cutting edge treatments available when compared to some of the other hospitals available for treating cancer like for instance MD Anderson in Houston. CTCA’s big advantage is their willingness to spend tons of money on advertising and not because the treatments available there are different than the treatments available at many other top rate cancer facilities.
The NCI has chosen about 35 cancer centers that they designate as comprehensive cancer centers meaning they are able to deal with complex cases of almost every type cancer. This also means that clinical trials are widely available – something that CTCA does not offer. Here is a link to find the nearest NCI designated comprehensive cancer center located nearest to you.
http://cancercenters.cancer.gov/cancer_centers/cancer-centers-list.html
BTW- Do not get the self named "comprehensive cancer centers" mixed up with the NCI designated facilities. While they may still be very good hospitals, for whatever reason, the NCI has not yet designated them as an NCI facility.
If I was looking for a hospital in North Carolina I would probably choose Duke Medical Center – the facility that performed Sen. Kennedy’s brain surgery. Like MD Anderson in Houston, people travel from all over the world to be seen at Duke Medical Center because of the many cancer experts working there, the clinical trials available plus the high level of patient care.
http://www.dukehealth.org/
good luck
References :
Anywhere would be an alternative. This is a private for profit organization that has been in trouble with the FTC for false and unsubstantiated claims. I am not aware of any other hospital that has had this problem.
I work for various hospitals throughout Los Angeles County and we have several well-known hospitals here where people come from all over the world for treatment and there are many less known community hospitals that give care that is just as good and in some cases better than these well known hospitals.
The best advice I can give to your co-workers brother is to be an informed consumer. He and a trusted friend or family member should learn as much about his disease as possible so that he can ask good questions and make informed decisions. Get opinions from 2 or 3 oncologists that do not practice together. Someone should go with him to all appointments where test results or treatment options are discussed. Keep a running list of any questions he thinks of and take the list with him to his doctors appointments.
Unless he has an unusual cancer he should get very good treatment at a hospital his insurance is contracted with. He may also want to check with the American College of Surgeons for hospitals in his area with approved cancer programs. They are responsible for accrediting hospital cancer programs in the United States.
References :
I am a cancer registrar.
they say there’s "no cure" for anything so that you’ll have to rely on their drugs/treatment the rest of your life,thus making profits.
there are natural cures, but if they were to be known the FDA would be out of business!
References :
I take every chance I can to brag on both Wake Forrest Univ Medical Center and Duke Univ Medical Center. I am treated by both hospitals, and they are awesome. The Triad and Triangle areas (Winston Salem and Durham) is a huge area with anything you could possibly want. And I have been treated with great respect and have full trust in all of my doctors. And they are both NCI designated comprehensive.
References :
Is your CEB (co-worker’s brother) open to alternative cancer treatments? Some people think it makes more sense to try the safer non-toxic treatments before the toxic conventional treatments. If that is the case, he will find that alternative cancer treatments are inexpensive. I know that most doctors will yell that he will be throwing away valuable time during which the tumors will grow, time he could have used to take the "proven effective" conventional treatments. That is a bunch of crap. Read about this study:
A small study in 1959 run by Jane C Wright, directing cancer research at Bellevue Memorial Medical Center in New York City, ran a study based on the light ideas of John Ott DSc. Advised by Ott, Dr Wright instructed fifteen cancer patients to stay outdoors as much as possible that summer in natural sunlight without wearing their glasses, and particularly without sunglasses.
By that Autumn, the tumors in 14 of 15 had not grown, and some patients had got better. Ott wondered why the fifteenth had not benefited. He discovered that this woman had not fully understood the instructions – while she had not worn sunglasses, she had continued to wear her prescription glasses. This blocking of UV into her eyes was enough to stop the benefits enjoyed by the other fourteen.
The reason this study does not receive much attention is that stopping tumor growth is not considered a measure of the quality of a cancer treatment. Only tumor shrinkage or cancer cell death is considered a measure of the effectiveness of a cancer treatment. Since conventional cancer treatments such as chemo are believed to accomplish these effects, sunlight research cannot obtain funding. In actuality, chemo has been shown to "shrink" tumors by breaking us the tumor cells which then travel to other sites in the body to start more tumors. Reported at the 27th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Dec 2004, (abstract 6014), by German investigators from Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena.
So if you CWF wants to buy some time how hard can it be? Just get outside and take off those sunglasses, UV radiation is not going to damage your eyes unless you are in an intense sunlight situation such as in a snow field or on water. I live in Arizona and spend a lot of time outdoors without sun glasses. I am 58 and an avid reader. I don’t need glasses unless the print is tiny and the light poor. UV radiation damage my ass. Sure when I was a lifeguard on the east coast, I wore two pairs of sunglasses like the rest of the guys, but in normal situations, a hat with a brim is the way to go.
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References :
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