We all know someone touched by cancer.
This is your opportunity to help.

One thousand new patients from communities across our region are treated at Glens Falls Hospital's nationally accredited C.R. Wood Cancer Center each year.

This year, the Glens Falls Hospital Foundation is urging you to make a difference in their lives by joining "Communities Against Cancer" and helping us purchase a new linear accelerator, the technology that delivers cancer-destroying X-ray and electron beams to cancerous tumors.

This technology comes at a significant cost - $4 million - and we have set an ambitious goal to raise $2 million in donations.

To do so, we will need the help of our entire community - individuals, families, neighborhoods and entire municipalities … businesses, civic groups, churches and schools.

The New Linear Accelerator

Our Cancer Center currently has two linear accelerators, both of which precisely shape and direct X-ray beams to maximize the radiation dose to the diseased area and minimize the impact on surrounding healthy tissue.

The new linear accelerator will provide advanced capabilities such as stereotactic radiosurgery for treating tumors that are highly complex, irregularly shaped or located in difficult to reach or highly critical locations. For some patients, treatment regimens could be reduced from five to seven weeks to one to three days, and daily treatment times cut from 20-30 minutes to as little as two minutes. With the addition of the new technology, we will retire the oldest of our two existing accelerators.

Why Glens Falls Hospital Needs An Annual Fund

"Community support is absolutely essential to the Hospital being able to continually upgrade its medical technology and provide our communities with an extremely high caliber of care right here at home," said Hospital President and CEO David G. Kruczlnicki.

Mr. Kruczlnicki said the payments the Hospital receives from Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers at best cover the cost of the medical professionals and supplies needed to provide a patient's care, with no provision for technology purchases. Likewise, he said, the Hospital's razor-thin operating margin leaves little money for these upgrades.

"Like most hospitals in New York State, we break even, if that. In 2011, we had a two percent gain," Mr. Kruczlnicki said. "That means for every dollar that flowed through the Hospital, at the end of the day, we had two cents left over. That translates to a mere fraction of the seventy million dollars we've needed to invest in medical technology over the last three years."

How You Can Help

Gifts to "Communities Against Cancer" can be made through our secure online giving site or by sending a check to:

Communities Against Cancer
Glens Falls Hospital Foundation
126 South Street
Glens Falls, NY 12801

For more information, or to talk with the Foundation staff about hosting a fundraiser, please call us at (518) 926-5960.

VIDEOS:

Why does Glens Falls Hospital
have an Annual Fund?

Why does Glens Falls Hospital need
a new Linear Accelerator?

How does Radiation Therapy
fight cancer?