BayCare Opens $33 Million Proton Therapy Center at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa

BayCare has opened a $33 million proton therapy center at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, giving cancer patients in the Tampa Bay region another place to receive one of the most targeted forms of radiation treatment. The BayCare Proton Center, inside the hospital's Fred J. Woods Radiation Therapy Center, is now accepting patients and treats eligible adults and children, the nonprofit health system announced this week.

The center is built around a compact proton system from Mevion Medical Systems and an upright treatment chair that lets patients be treated while seated. It opens about a year later than BayCare's original target, and it joins a growing list of proton centers on Florida's west coast.

What opened

BayCare announced the opening in a news release on Oct. 14. The center sits in the Fred J. Woods Radiation Therapy Center at St. Joseph's, the 615-bed hospital on West Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Tampa.

Unlike older proton facilities, which required large accelerators and multiple treatment rooms, compact systems are designed to fit into existing hospital space. When BayCare broke ground in 2024, it said the unit would fit in about 2,000 square feet inside the radiation therapy center. Some early proton centers needed buildings of up to 50,000 square feet to house the cyclotron that generates the protons, Health News Florida reported at the time.

BayCare has described the accelerator as the only proton accelerator built in the United States. It was trucked from Mevion's plant in Littleton, Massachusetts, and lifted into place at St. Joseph's in October 2025. To install it, crews removed a concrete-planked roof so a 400-ton crane could lower the accelerator into its vault, then put the 32 concrete planks back, according to BayCare. "We are very proud to highlight this major milestone with the expectation of offering this treatment to both adult and pediatric patients," Jennifer Kotwicki, director of operations at St. Joseph's, said then.

How proton therapy works

Conventional radiation therapy uses X-rays, whose energy passes through the body and can damage healthy tissue beyond the tumor. Proton therapy uses charged particles that can be made to deposit most of their energy at a specific depth, which reduces the dose delivered past the target.

That can be especially useful for tumors near critical organs and for some children, whose developing bodies may be more vulnerable to the long-term effects of radiation. Whether proton therapy offers an advantage over other treatments depends on the type and location of the cancer and on the individual patient. BayCare has said patients treated with protons report fewer side effects and have a lower risk of secondary cancers.

The upright chair

Like many newer facilities, BayCare's system uses an upright patient positioning chair, so patients can be treated sitting up rather than lying on a table. According to BayCare, the chair may make treatment more comfortable for some adults and children and can help patients who have trouble lying flat because of conditions such as chronic lung disease.

"The upright patient chair is an important differentiating technology of our proton therapy system, enabling our team to provide more comfortable treatments while maintaining the high precision of proton therapy," said John Greskovich, medical director of the BayCare Department of Radiation Oncology.

BayCare said in its opening announcement that it is only the second site in the world to use the technology.

A longer road than planned

BayCare first announced plans for a proton center at St. Joseph's in 2023 and selected Mevion to equip it that November. At the September 2024 groundbreaking, the health system said it expected to treat its first patients in 2025, and said the compact system's smaller footprint would allow an expedited timeline. Although other health systems had announced proton plans first, BayCare said then that it aimed to be the first to open in the Tampa Bay area.

"Our mission is to provide superior proton therapy to as many cancer patients as possible," Mevion Chief Operating Officer Curt Kienast said at the time. Don Ingram, a BayCare board member who was treated for prostate cancer with proton therapy, said at the groundbreaking that "this is a lifesaving treatment that can now be available to everybody here locally when it was not before." BayCare President and CEO Stephanie Conners said that "innovative technologies like proton therapy are why we continue to be the No. 1 health system and provider of choice in the Tampa Bay region."

When the accelerator arrived in October 2025, BayCare said it expected the center to begin treating patients by mid-2026. It opened in October.

Proton therapy in Florida

In 2024, Florida was home to six of the nation's 42 proton therapy centers, and none were on the state's west coast, Health News Florida reported then. That has changed quickly.

• Moffitt Cancer Center's proton therapy center at its Speros outpatient campus in Land O' Lakes in Pasco County, a 30,000-square-foot facility when it topped out in 2024, is accepting patients.
• Southwest Florida Proton in Estero, a center of about 35,000 square feet in partnership with Lee Health, is accepting patients.
• Tampa General Hospital announced plans in 2023 for a proton therapy facility. In 2024 it was planning a 44,000-square-foot center with Florida Cancer Specialists and Research Institute, originally set to open sometime in 2025.

Elsewhere in Florida, proton therapy is available at the UF Health Proton Therapy Institute in Jacksonville, at Orlando Health Cancer Institute in Orlando and at Miami Cancer Institute, which is affiliated with Baptist Health South Florida.

BayCare's cancer network

BayCare operates 16 hospitals across the Tampa Bay and Central Florida regions. Its radiation oncology programs include St. Joseph's Hospital, Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, St. Anthony's Hospital in St. Petersburg and Winter Haven Hospital. When it broke ground, the system said the proton center would be an advancement for cancer treatment services across all of BayCare, including those other accredited programs.

What's next

The center is now accepting eligible adult and pediatric patients. With BayCare, Moffitt and Southwest Florida Proton all treating patients, and Tampa General's planned facility still ahead, Florida's west coast has gone from having no proton therapy centers in 2024 to three in operation.