Sanford Thief River Falls Expands Collaboration with Roger Maris Cancer Center

Sanford Thief River Falls is expanding its partnership with the Sanford Roger Maris Cancer Center.

Cancer patients can now receive outpatient clinic cancer care at Sanford Thief River Falls Monday-Friday thanks to the addition of a full-time nurse practitioner, Chasidi Plaine. Plaine spent six months training at the Sanford Roger Maris Cancer Center in Fargo, offering expertise daily to patients battling cancer.

The Sanford Roger Maris Cancer Center integration also includes a Roger Maris mural wall, a bell that patients ring marking the end of treatments and cancer center plaques that describes the history of Roger Maris.

“This is a game-changer for Thief River Falls and surrounding communities,” said Tyler Ust, Sanford Thief River Falls clinic director. “Cancer does not discriminate. It does not care where you live or what you look like. Adding Chasidi to the infusion center will prevent our patients from having to make those extra two-to-three-hour trips. This is not possible without the teamwork and focus on patient care from our highly trained and emphatic nurses, pharmacists that hold safety to the highest priority and outreach physicians, Dr. Amit Panwalkar and Dr. Radhakishna Vegunta, who lead diagnoses and treatment plans to help save lives.”

The Sanford Thief River Falls infusion center is now open five days a week with six infusion bays. The infusion center sees over 3,000 encounters each year. Over the past decade, infusion and chemotherapy services have grown over 54% in Thief River Falls, going from eight patients per day to 13 patients per day. Chemotherapy cancer treatments have been a large part of that increase, going from 500 chemotherapy encounters per year to 1,000.

Over the past five years, roughly 100 people per year have been diagnosed with a new cancer in Northwest Minnesota.  The most prevalent cancers are colorectal, breast and skin cancer.