By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
When Barbara Forbes got the news Dr. Robert Lavey was leaving the Wood County Hospital cancer center, she was certain he had taken a job at a bigger hospital.
“He’s so gifted,” said Forbes, who was diagnosed with stage 4 Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in April 2017. “His expertise, his intelligence, his knowledge, his compassion, his communication are above and beyond.”
Then Forbes was informed that Lavey had been terminated at the cancer center.
“I’m being brutally frank – I was absolutely devastated when I heard he was leaving,” she said. “We’ve lost a gift and someone else is getting a gift.”
Lavey, who had been medical director of the cancer center since its opening in 2014, said he was terminated in July at the Maurer Family Cancer Care Center after the number of patients being treated at the center dropped. He had been hired in November of 2013 to help design the center, select the staff, choose the equipment, and set the policies and procedures.
His was the smiling face associated with the cancer center.
“I feel a real pride in what we’ve done for the community and the services we provide for the patients and their families,” Lavey said during one of his final days at Wood County Hospital. “I am very much invested emotionally in the services.”
Lavey said he was told the decision to end his employment was “just business.”
“I was simply given notice I was being terminated.”
Wood County Hospital President Stan Korducki declined to answer questions about Lavey’s departure.
“I can’t comment on any personnel matters,” he said.
Korducki stressed that the Maurer Family Cancer Care Center continues to provide quality patient care.
“I can’t make any comment about Dr. Lavey,” he said. “We continue to have excellent physician services at the Maurer Cancer Center. Nothing has changed in terms of that.”
Lavey said he was in the middle of a contract set to expire on March 30, 2019. The hospital has replaced him with Dr. Dhaval Parikh, who is board certified in radiation oncology and has practiced for more than 20 years.
According to the hospital, Parikh provides care for patients “with all types of cancers through highly conformal radiation therapies, which matches the radiation beams to the shape of the tumor for precise treatment. He is well-versed in a variety of advanced treatment techniques and specializes in the latest therapies including external and internal radiation therapy.”
But that’s of little consolation to patients who had come to trust Lavey for their cancer treatment.
“The day I got the letter (about Lavey leaving) I felt so lost,” said Diane Ruggiero, who is being treated for breast cancer. “What am I going to do without him? I could just cry. He was my rock. I think he saved me.”
Ruggiero started her initial cancer care at the Cleveland Clinic. For the past three years, she had been working with Lavey.
“He’s a wonderful doctor,” she said. “I felt so cared for with Dr. Lavey. What a dedicated man he was. I could see that he was brilliant. He was welcoming and friendly.”
A cancer patient’s relationship is so important, Ruggiero said. Once a level of trust is established, that relationship is vital to the treatment, she explained.
“The cancer is so scary,” she said. “I trust him. He accommodated me as a whole person, not just someone with a breast to be radiated.”
Ruggiero said Lavey’s qualities went beyond the medical treatments. Each year, he would hold a dinner for his cancer patients and survivors at the Simpson Garden Building in Bowling Green to celebrate their success.
“He paid for everybody’s dinner,” and walked around taking photos of smiling patients, Ruggiero said.
“What a loss for Bowling Green,” she said.
Forbes, who is in chemotherapy after her cancer returned, shared the same feeling of loss.
“I was honored to have him go part way on my journey,” Forbes said. “He certainly helped the journey. This will adversely affect a lot of people.”
Lavey heard from several of his patients before his final day on the job.
“They are angry this is happening, and they feel abandoned,” he said. “I consider it a great honor to be given this position, and to have people in the community welcome me and trust me with their health and lives.”
Lavey said he had made an attempt to become an integral part of Bowling Green.
“I made a commitment to the community,” he said. “I intended to stay here for the rest of my life. I would like the community to know I do not leave them by choice.”
His termination, Lavey said, resulted from the number of cancer cases diagnosed at Wood County Hospital dropping by one-third in the last couple years.
“That’s the major factor that led to this,” he said. “The hospital’s cancer cases have dramatically decreased.”
But Lavey said the drop in patients is due to many different factors. Hospital staff making cancer diagnoses in the past have left and not been replaced, he said. There is no longer a breast cancer surgery specialist or a specialist in ear/nose/throat surgeries, according to Lavey, so patients are getting their diagnoses and treatments elsewhere.
The marketing director, who helped with the cancer center marketing, was terminated as well a couple years ago. She had worked to arrange meetings with physicians, set up TV and radio interviews, and worked on a marketing campaign to make the public and area physicians aware of the cancer center.
“Since the hospital terminated Catharine (Harned), there has been no one who has worked with me on marketing,” Lavey said. “Any other organization I’m familiar with, there would be people who actively promote the physicians and the clinic. It’s been a deficiency here. I made my best efforts on my own.”
Lavey said he emailed proposals to Korducki on how to reverse the decline in cancer patients – but those ideas were ignored. Among Lavey’s proposals was setting up a colonoscopy program and skin cancer screening, plus promoting months dedicated to specific cancers such as lung and prostate.
“The hospital wouldn’t cooperate with coordinating any programs,” Lavey said.
Since leaving Wood County Hospital, Lavey has been offered a position doing proton radiation therapy in Knoxville, Tennessee. He begins work there in November.
