After less than a year of fundraising for a comprehensive cancer clinic on its East Jackson campus, St. John’s Health has raised $28.4 million.
That’s more than the $25 million goal it set to revamp a defunct inpatient rehabilitation facility into a home for a linear accelerator, a machine that could cost up to $5 million and is necessary for treatment in more than 50% of cancer cases.
“It’s just been incredible,” Anna Olson, president of St. John’s Health Foundation, told KHOL. “I couldn’t be more grateful [and] feel really excited about what we’ll be able to do going forward.”
The fundraising news comes less than a week after voters effectively doubled St. John’s property tax allocation via two ballot measures. The area’s largest year-round employer asked the community to fund the cancer center in January in light of financial headwinds and anticipating an unfavorable outcome in the Nov. 4 election.
A Nov. 9 press release said it was the hospital foundation’s biggest fundraising campaign yet and included a $4 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.
The New York-based organization is the philanthropic arm for the fortune of deceased hotel and real estate magnates Leona and Harry Helmsley and has spent more than $850 million on rural health care in the Upper Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions since 2009, according to the Associated Press.
St. John’s already offers chemotherapy, infusion, oncology, a pharmacy center and imaging. But since 2023, it has strategized to provide the missing critical link of radiation. It had 1,100 total annual oncology patients last year at all points in treatment, Olson said. The hospital aims to serve most of an estimated 180 patients in the region who need radiation.
As it stands, those who need radiation must travel to Idaho Falls, the University of Utah or farther. That often means overnight hotel stays, plus the web of planning for kids, pets or work that complicates the already stressful and draining treatment.
“Bringing radiation oncology to Jackson means patients can receive more of their cancer treatment in their own community, closer to family and the support systems that matter most,” said Walter Panzirer, Leona Helmsley’s grandson and a Trustee for the Helmsley Charitable Trust, in St. John’s press release.
Working in an existing space means fewer construction expenses, Olson said. But the comprehensive care center will see additions such as 4-foot-thick walls to safely administer radiation in a secure vault and a more welcoming space with big windows as well as more space for infusion, imaging and counseling.
“We will see an increase in patients, but the more important factor is being able to provide more services to each patient,” Olson said.
After announcing the plans earlier this year, the hospital saw some scrutiny from a Jackson Hole attorney whose op-ed in the Jackson Hole News&Guide speculated that cancer care would dig the hospital into a deeper financial hole. In response, hospital leaders defended the math, projecting it would break even at 51 oncology patients a year. That conservative figure doesn’t include potential radiation patients for bursitis and arthritis, Oslson said.
The publicly owned hospital expects to break ground next summer and open the comprehensive clinic in 2028.
