GREENVILLE, Miss.—When Dr. Gregg Dickerson, the radiation oncologist at Alliance Cancer Center in Greenville, Mississippi, was told on April 13 that the radiation clinic was shutting down effective June 1, he was stunned.

“I’m on vacation, so I was just resting,” Dickerson told the Mississippi Free Press on Friday. “I got a message that I needed to be on a phone call. So I got a phone call from (clinic owner) Akumen and they told us they had decided to shut the center down. Just blindsided.”

But after days of seeing the community’s reaction, he is more optimistic. “I think that the tone right now is one of hope, that we’re going to salvage this situation. That’s the feeling that I have,” Dickerson said.

A letter from the Greenville Cancer Center
Click here to read Dr. Maroun Hayek’s letter to patients announcing the closure of the Alliance Cancer Center’s radiation clinic.

The fate of one of the Mississippi Delta’s last remaining radiation clinics is unclear. Patients were informed Tuesday through a letter written by Dickerson’s oncology colleague, Dr. Maroun Hayek of Greenville’s Delta Health Systems Cancer Center, that the radiation clinic was closing on June 1. If that happens, the results could severely impact patients.

“Without a local center, patients will be forced to travel more than 2 hours each way to Jackson, Mississippi, every single day,“ Hayek said in the letter. “For many in our community, this is simply not possible. This means that some patients may be forced to delay treatment, stop treatment, or go without treatment altogether.”

Dickerson explained that over the last several years, governments have reduced reimbursements to what are called “free-standing treatment centers,” such as the radiation clinic, which is owned by Akumen, a provider in radiation diagnostics, testing and therapy. Dickerson said that both Akumin and the Washington County-owned Delta Health Systems hospital saw what was coming and entered into negotiations for the hospital to acquire the radiation clinic. 

The oncologist said that despite “God-awful” slow negotiations, “We were making some headway recently and something happened that caused the hospital to withdraw,” though he did not reveal the reasoning and deferred to Delta Health Systems. Delta Health Systems Community Development Manager Kim Dowdy declined comment to the Mississippi Free Press when contacted Friday. Akumin’s Vice President of Oncology Michele Schumann also declined comment when contacted Friday.

Delivering the Best Care Possible

Hayek’s letter asked patients to call the five members of the Washington County Board of Supervisors: Lee Gordon, Tommy Benson, Carl McGee, Mala Brooks and Jerry Redmond Sr., The Mississippi Free Press attempted to contact all five supervisors on April 16 but none responded. 

Dickerson said that while he has not heard from supervisors directly, he has heard that they may be “sympathetic” to doing whatever it takes in keeping the radiation clinic open.

The potential closure “pretty much put everyone in Greenville and Washington County on the edge of their seats because they don’t want to see this happen,” he said. “And the reason that it can’t happen is that for every oncology patient the medical oncologists see, 75% of those patients need radiation treatment as part of their care.”

Dickerson said that he and his fellow physicians are committed to providing the best care possible for local cancer patients. And despite being recruited to move elsewhere through the years, the oncologist said he has seen the benefit of his services with his patients.

“I want to help these people. They need it,” he said. “I’ll be frank with you, some of the doctors they’ve had in the past haven’t been able to provide that kind of service to people. When I got here, there were people suffering from some side effects from the treatments, and I know how to keep patients from having those side effects in the first place and still get the results as far as disease control and survival. And I was able to help those patients heal. 

‘This Is a Time for Action’

Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons told the Mississippi Free Press that the radiation center’s closing is a disservice to the community. Earlier Thursday, Mayor Simmons wrote a Facebook post marking the 63rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In this post, Simmons mentioned the current state of healthcare in the Mississippi Delta and the charge to change it.

“We must not forget this state’s failure to expand Medicaid over the past 14 years—resulting in billions of dollars in lost healthcare investment … This is a time for action. Action to protect healthcare access. Action to strengthen our hospitals. Action to invest in the well-being of our people,” Simmons wrote. 

A white brick business with no cars parked around it
The Alliance Cancer Center, which shares a location with the Delta Health Systems Cancer Center in Greenville, Miss. MFP Photo by Jaylin R. Smith

The announcement of the radiation treatment center closing comes the same week as Greenwood Leflore Hospital—located in Greenwood, Mississippi, just over 50 miles east of Greenville—filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection. GLH is currently negotiating with the University of Mississippi Medical Center for a potential takeover.

Simmons’ call for Medicaid expansion echoes other local and state leaders who have argued for years that expansion could have helped relieve Mississippi’s rural hospital crisis years ago. However, the Mississippi Legislature could never come to a consensus on how to implement expansion. President Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill that was passed last summer is expected to cut up to $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program and remove up to 14.9 million Americans from those programs by 2034. Legislative leaders confirmed this year that the Medicaid expansion effort is dead due to these cuts.

Washington County, Mississippi, has a population of roughly 41,000 people, with a Black population of 74%. 

➡️ Read more stories from the Delta Bureau here.

Jaylin R. Smith, a Corps member for Report for America, is a multimedia journalist and motivational speaker from Greenwood, Mississippi. After receiving two bachelor’s degrees in communications from her beloved HBCU, Mississippi Valley State University, she continued her education at the University of Mississippi where she received a masters in Journalism and New Media. Over her college career, Jaylin has written articles for the Truist Leadership Institute, Overby Center for Southern Politics and Journalism, and the Hotty Toddy website. She was also chosen as a 2024 TEDx Speaker at the University of Mississippi. Her love for diversity and community have fueled her academic and professional interests, making the Delta Region reporter ideal for her. In her leisure time, Jaylin enjoys singing (very badly), writing poetry, hanging with friends, and being adventurous.

Assistant Editor Kevin Edwards joins the MFP after spending more than six years in newspapers around Mississippi. A native of El Paso, Texas, Kevin moved to Cleveland in Bolivar County when he was 10 years old and has spent most of his life in the Mississippi Delta. He graduated from Delta State University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in liberal studies, as well as a master’s in journalism from the University of Memphis. Following his education, he spent a year with the Birmingham, Alabama-based nonprofit Impact America in its Memphis office as an AmeriCorps member, providing free vision screenings to young children and free tax preparation for working families. His time as a reporter includes nearly four years with The Greenwood Commonwealth in Greenwood, as well as The Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland and The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus. Kevin lives in Sidon, just outside Greenwood city limits in Leflore County.