The Business of Proton Therapy: Bankruptcy to Breakthrough
Episode Summary
In one of the most candid episodes of The Cancer Project podcast, David Raubach sits down with his two business partners — Chris Brown and Tom Welch — to tell the inside story of how they purchased the Oklahoma Proton Center out of bankruptcy in January 2019. What was initially envisioned as a straightforward structured sale became a grueling, months-long bankruptcy process that pushed all three men to their personal and professional limits. This is the story of three entrepreneurs who had no prior bankruptcy experience, no private equity backing, and no roadmap — yet refused to let one of the most advanced cancer treatment centers in the country go dark.
The Oklahoma Proton Center opened in 2012, built by a large for-profit healthcare company as a hospital-based facility in Oklahoma City offering proton therapy — a highly precise form of radiation treatment that spares surrounding healthy tissue. By 2018, the original investors and operators had fallen into severe financial distress, and the center entered what was supposed to be a structured sale process. When that process collapsed into a formal Section 363 bankruptcy, David, Chris, and Tom found themselves navigating an unfamiliar and high-stakes legal arena against sophisticated creditors and competing bidders, while patients continued to receive treatment and staff continued to show up for work. The trio describe late-night calls with bankruptcy counsel, anxious conversations with spouses, and at least one moment in the summer of 2018 when it genuinely appeared the deal might not close.
Tom Welch, who joined the effort several months after David and Chris had already begun pursuing the opportunity, brings a particularly candid outside perspective to the episode. He describes wrestling with the risk of a significant personal financial commitment and repeatedly returning to a single anchoring question: is the technology real, and can the business be structured to work? His conclusion — that proton therapy’s clinical advantages are genuine, that the physics are sound, and that the right leadership team changes the calculus entirely — ultimately drove his decision to commit. The arrival of Dr. Chang as medical director is identified by all three partners as a pivotal inflection point, both operationally and in terms of restoring confidence among referring physicians across Oklahoma and the surrounding region.
The episode closes with a clear-eyed assessment of where the Oklahoma Proton Center stands today versus the distressed operation the partners inherited in early 2019. Patient volumes have grown substantially, the clinical team has expanded, and the range of cancers treated has broadened. But beyond the business metrics, all three partners return to the same core mission: making world-class cancer treatment accessible to patients who would otherwise have no realistic path to it. That mission — and the belief that patients in Oklahoma deserve the same standard of care available at major academic medical centers in large coastal cities — is the thread that runs through every difficult decision they recount in this conversation.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- Section 363 Bankruptcy Sale: A federal bankruptcy process in which a company’s assets are sold free and clear of prior debts, allowing the new buyer to take ownership without inheriting the failed entity’s liabilities. This is what enabled David, Chris, and Tom to purchase the Oklahoma Proton Center and start with a clean balance sheet.
- Proton Therapy: A form of radiation treatment that uses a beam of protons rather than conventional X-rays to target tumors. Because protons deposit most of their energy precisely at the tumor site and stop — rather than continuing through the body — the treatment spares more surrounding healthy tissue, reducing side effects for many patients.
- Structured Sale vs. Bankruptcy: The original plan to transfer ownership was a structured sale — a negotiated, out-of-court transaction. When complicating factors emerged, the process converted into a formal bankruptcy, introducing court oversight, creditor committees, and an auction process with competing bids.
- Clinical Leadership as a Business Signal: Tom Welch describes how the caliber of the clinical team — specifically the arrival of Dr. Chang as medical director — was as important a factor in his investment decision as the technology itself. Referring physicians’ confidence in the program was directly tied to who was leading it clinically.
- Competing Bids and Auction Risk: In a Section 363 sale, any qualified buyer can submit a competing bid during the court-supervised auction process. David recounts a period in the summer of 2018 when competing bids created genuine uncertainty about whether the partnership would prevail.
- Post-Acquisition Stabilization: Immediately after closing in January 2019, the partners’ primary focus was not growth but stabilization — restoring staff morale, reassuring patients about continuity of care, and demonstrating long-term commitment through visible investment in the facility and equipment.
- Referring Physician Relationships: Rebuilding patient volume after the bankruptcy required re-establishing trust with the oncologists, urologists, and surgeons who refer patients for radiation treatment. These referral relationships are the primary driver of patient pipeline for a center like OPC.
- Access to Advanced Treatment: A core part of the Oklahoma Proton Center’s mission is geographic equity — ensuring that cancer patients in Oklahoma and the surrounding region have access to the same quality of proton therapy available at large academic medical centers in major metropolitan areas.
- Personal Financial Commitment: Unlike institutional private equity buyers, David, Chris, and Tom were individuals making personal financial commitments to acquire the center. Tom Welch explicitly acknowledges the weight of that decision and the moments of genuine doubt it produced.
- Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship: Throughout the episode, all three partners describe the mission of saving patient access to proton therapy — not financial return — as the motivating force that kept them going through the most difficult stretches of the bankruptcy process.
The story of how David Raubach, Chris Brown, and Tom Welch rescued the Oklahoma Proton Center from bankruptcy is ultimately a story about what happens when conviction meets complexity. None of them had done a bankruptcy before. None of them had the institutional resources of a private equity firm. What they had was a belief that the technology was real, that the patients needed it, and that the right team could make the business work. Five years later, a center that was treating a dwindling patient census under the shadow of insolvency is now thriving — and the community it serves has access to cancer care they might otherwise have had to travel hundreds of miles to find. If you or someone you know is navigating a cancer diagnosis and wondering whether proton therapy might be appropriate, we encourage you to reach out to the Oklahoma Proton Center directly and ask the questions that matter.
Full Transcript
Read Full Transcript
David Raubach: So, I’m really excited. This is a very special episode of the Cancer Project podcast. I have my two partners, Chris Brown and Tom Welch here, and we are going to talk about the experience that we had buying the Oklahoma Proton Center out of bankruptcy in 2019. And for me, I think back on that period of time — 2018, working to try to buy the center and then ultimately being able to buy it in January — as the most challenging thing that I’ve ever done professionally, and probably personally too. What are your guys’ reactions when you think about that period of time in our lives?
Chris Brown: Well, I’ll go first. I think back and I have this sort of visceral reaction. Some of the first things I think about were the three of us being on the phone at night with bankruptcy counsel — because first of all, it wasn’t supposed to be a bankruptcy. It was supposed to be a structured sale. It turned into a bankruptcy because of these complicating factors. You guys had already left your jobs. I may have left mine through other circumstances, which we can talk about. But I remember the three of us being on the phone sometimes until midnight with bankruptcy attorneys, and I remember calling my wife and explaining what was happening. She was supportive, but I could tell in her voice she was worried.
Tom Welch: Yeah. I agree. I think the anxiety was palpable. And I think what was really challenging about this is that — and I think all three of us can say this — none of us had ever done a bankruptcy before. This was not something that was in our skillset.
Chris Brown: So let me back up and give some context. David, why don’t you start — tell us what the Oklahoma Proton Center is, and how did you first get involved?
David Raubach: Yeah. So the Oklahoma Proton Center is a hospital-based proton therapy center in Oklahoma City. It was built by a large for-profit healthcare company in the early 2010s and opened in 2012. And it treats cancer patients using proton therapy, which is a very precise form of radiation that spares healthy tissue.
Chris Brown: At its peak, it was treating — what — 80, 90 patients a day?
David Raubach: At peak operations I think probably 70 to 80 patients a day was the plan. But the reality was that the original investors and operators got themselves into financial difficulty for a number of reasons, and by 2018 the center was in serious financial distress and ultimately went into bankruptcy.
David Raubach: And Chris — how did you first get connected to this opportunity?
Chris Brown: So I had known about the Oklahoma Proton Center for a while through some professional connections, and I knew that it was going through financial difficulties. At some point in late 2017 or early 2018, the opportunity came up to explore whether there was a way to restructure the ownership and save the center.
David Raubach: And Tom — you came in a little bit later in the process. How did you get pulled in?
Tom Welch: Yeah. So Chris and David had already been working on this for several months before I got involved. I was at that point kind of between opportunities, and David called me and said, “Look, we’re working on something really interesting. Would you want to come take a look?” And I said, “Sure.” And I came and took a look and — I mean, I had a lot of questions.
David Raubach: Tell me about some of those questions.
Tom Welch: Well, I mean — first of all, a proton therapy center is a really complex business. These are some of the most complicated medical facilities in the world. The equipment is extraordinarily expensive. The operations are complex. The reimbursement landscape is complicated. And so the first question was just: is this viable? Can this business work?
David Raubach: And what convinced you that it could work?
Tom Welch: I think a few things. One was the technology itself. Proton therapy is a genuinely better treatment for certain types of cancer. The physics are real. The clinical outcomes data is compelling. And I thought: if the technology is this good, the business should work — it just needs to be structured correctly. The second thing was the team. David had already assembled a really strong clinical team. Dr. Story was there. Dr. Chang was coming. And I thought: if you’ve got the right clinical leadership and the right technology, the business can work.
David Raubach: So let’s talk about the bankruptcy process itself. Because I think people have this idea that bankruptcy means the business is gone. But that’s not what happened here. Can you explain what a bankruptcy sale is?
Chris Brown: Yeah. So there are different types of bankruptcy. What happened here is what’s called a Section 363 sale — where you sell the assets of the company through a bankruptcy court process. And the idea is that the new buyer gets a clean slate: they’re buying the assets free and clear of the prior company’s debts. So the center continued to operate through the bankruptcy. Patients continued to be treated. The staff continued to come to work. But the ownership changed through a court process.
David Raubach: And how long did that process take?
Chris Brown: From when we started seriously pursuing this to when we actually closed the transaction was probably about a year. And it was an incredibly stressful year, because throughout the whole process there was uncertainty. There were other bidders. There were moments where it looked like it might not happen.
David Raubach: What were some of the biggest obstacles?
Chris Brown: I think the biggest obstacle was the sheer complexity of it. I mean, we’re not a large private equity firm with a team of lawyers and bankers and advisors. We were three guys trying to figure this out. And the counterparties in the deal — the creditors, the bankruptcy trustee — they were sophisticated. They’d done this before. We hadn’t.
Chris Brown: And I remember at one point — David, you can correct me if I’m wrong — there was a moment where we thought the whole thing was going to fall apart.
David Raubach: Yeah. There was a period — I think it was late in the summer of 2018 — where there were some competing bids that came in and we weren’t sure we were going to win. And I remember having a conversation with Chris and thinking, well, this might just not happen for us. And that was a really dark moment.
David Raubach: And how did you get through that?
Chris Brown: I think — I mean, I think belief. Belief in what we were trying to do. And also just — stubbornness.
Tom Welch: Yeah. Stubbornness is underrated.
Chris Brown: Absolutely.
David Raubach: Tom, you were newer to this than the other two. Were there moments when you second-guessed it?
Tom Welch: Honestly, yes. I mean — look, this was a significant personal financial commitment for all three of us. And there were moments where I thought, okay, is this the right thing to do? But I kept coming back to the mission. Because at the end of the day, what we were trying to do was save a cancer treatment center. We were trying to make sure that patients in Oklahoma and the surrounding region would continue to have access to proton therapy. And that — that matters.
David Raubach: Let’s talk about what happened after you won the auction. You closed the transaction in January 2019. What was the state of the center when you took over?
Chris Brown: It was challenging. I mean, the center had been through a really difficult period. Patient volumes were down. Staff morale was challenged. There was a lot of uncertainty.
Tom Welch: And I remember — the first few months were really about stabilization. Just getting everyone’s confidence back. Making sure patients felt secure. Making sure staff felt valued.
David Raubach: And what did that look like from a practical standpoint?
Chris Brown: I think a lot of it was communication. Being present. Walking the halls. Talking to the staff. Making sure they knew that we were committed for the long term. And also making investments. We put money into the facility. We put money into equipment upgrades. We made it clear that we were here to stay.
David Raubach: And from a clinical standpoint — how did you rebuild the patient pipeline?
Chris Brown: I think it was really about relationships. It was about connecting with referring physicians — oncologists, urologists, surgeons — and making them confident that the center was stable and that the clinical team was excellent. And I think having Dr. Chang come on as medical director was a turning point. Because he’s incredibly well respected in the Oklahoma oncology community. And when referring physicians saw that someone of his caliber was leading the clinical program, that gave them confidence.
David Raubach: And what does the center look like today compared to when you took over?
Tom Welch: It’s a completely different place. Patient volumes are up significantly. The clinical team has grown. We’ve expanded the types of cancers we treat. We’ve built a really strong reputation in the community. And I think — we’re not just surviving, we’re thriving.
David Raubach: What’s the mission of the Oklahoma Proton Center as you guys see it?
Chris Brown: I think the mission is pretty simple: to make the best cancer treatment in the world accessible to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it. Because a lot of proton therapy centers are in major academic medical centers in big cities. And there are a lot of cancer patients in Oklahoma and in the surrounding region who deserve access to the best treatment.
Tom Welch: And I think there’s also a mission around education — which is partly why this podcast exists. Because a lot of patients don’t even know that proton therapy is an option. And we want to change that.
David Raubach: Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the things that makes this podcast special — it’s not just about the business. It’s about connecting with patients and families and helping them navigate what can be a very confusing and frightening experience.
Chris Brown: Any final thoughts for people who might be thinking about proton therapy — or who are going through cancer treatment?
Tom Welch: I would just say: ask questions. Do your research. And don’t be afraid to seek out the best possible care. Because you deserve it.
David Raubach: And from a personal standpoint — for me, buying this center was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it’s also been one of the most meaningful. And I’m incredibly proud of what this team has built.
Chris Brown: Hear, hear. And I think the patients are at the center of all of it. We’re doing this for them.
David Raubach: Yeah. Absolutely. Without them, there is no Oklahoma Proton Center.
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