Transcript generated from the episode’s automatic captions. Speaker names are not identified, and automatic captioning may misspell names and terminology. Please refer to the video for the authoritative version.

Well, I want to thank you for joining us on today’s episode of the Cancer Project podcast. We are really fortunate to be joined by Hadley Ford, founder and former CEO of Procure Proton Therapy Centers. Procure was uh really one of the creators of the proton modern proton therapy industry and we’re going to talk all about the history of that company and how Hadley got involved and just his perspective now as he sees the legacy that Procure and he had on the proton therapy industry. So Hadley, thank you so much for joining us. My absolute pleasure, David. Happy to be here. I got to ask, what’s that in the background behind you there?

That looks very interesting. You know, I’m not I’m not really sure. I’m uh you know I’m retired now. So I just borrowed someone’s office to uh do this. Oh, that’s not It looked like an old like Chinese rug that you know 500 years old or something from the from some dynasty. Yeah, it could it could be. I don’t know. I’m in in Albuquerque, so it could be Chinese, could be local Native Americans. I don’t know. I I didn’t really look at it. I just came in and uh I I attempted to blur it, but my computer’s uh as you know had a little malware problem.

So, it’s not it’s not taking on the hardware capabilities of blurring the background for me. Well, you know, that can happen. So, um so I would love to just dive right in and go right back to the beginning. Um tell me what was the first point in time uh when you heard about proton therapy or heard the term proton therapy? Uh so we got to go we got to go way back give a little context. So, you know, 20, 30 years ago, I was a banker at Goldman, and I worked on a deal for a um uh a new alternative uh communications network based out of San Francisco.

And the general counsel on that deal was a guy named Kevin Cameron, who you will recognize as the son of Dr. Cameron, who becomes very important to the story. And uh Kevin and I became very close and doing that deal. And um I’d say 2 or 3 years after the deal uh had closed, I’d stayed in touch and whatnot. He he gave me a call and said uh you know my father’s working on something and um you know it appears to be a cure for cancer and uh he’s trying to put together a business and you know since you’re a banker and you help guys do that maybe you could have a phone call with them.

And because Kevin was a good friend and he had paid me lots of fees, uh, I said, “Sure, I’ll I’ll give a little free advice and, you know, we’ll see how it goes. ” Um, so I got on the phone with Dr. Cameron and he explained this crazy thing, proton therapy, and that he was uh doing something up there at IU and I guess he was running like a bunch of proton research for the government, but in kind of in the off hours or whatnot, he developed this proton therapy center and he had uh done that in such a manner that had reduced the cost, reduced the operating costs and all these wonderful things.

and he had this vision that he could build proton therapy centers in a community setting and bring this great technology out into the community and um I I thought that sounded pretty interesting. So I actually flew out to Bloomington, Indiana. At the time I think they still had a direct flight from Luard. Oh right. Yeah. Which after I joined joined forces with Dr. Cameron, of course they then cancelled that flight and had to India and drive down. But um I went out to uh I went out to see him and we talked about it. It sounded very interesting and I came back to New York and I ran a few numbers and did a little research and uh had a couple more phone calls with him and I was on the phone with him and I said, “You know, Dr.

Cameron, with all due respect, you’re, you know, a great a great physicist and a great visionary, but you really need someone who could uh sort of be the day-to-day CEO or, you know, someone who can pull the business side together. And, you know, with with your permission, I’ve got a couple guys and I could call them and introduce you and see if they’re interested. Um, and he said, “Sure, that would be great. ” Uh, so I hung up the phone with him and I literally got like four digits into the number of a guy I was going to call and I stopped and I said to myself, “Gee, Adley, you know, if if this is like such a great idea, why why are you calling somebody else?

” Right. Right. Why don’t you throw your your own hat in the ring? So I I I hung up and I called Dr. camera back and he said uh he said, “Oh, thanks, Adley. We just hung up. ” I said, “Well, you know, a crazy idea occurred to me. Um, you know, you’re going to need someone to give you a lot of advice on capital formation and strategy and business development and partnerships and things here because it’s a very complex situation. You there’s there’s no readily available capital. These things cost, you know, boatloads of dough. and you know how are you going to put these deals together with hospitals and doctor groups.

There’s a lot of regulatory stuff and uh I said so I thought you know you could hire me as an agent and pay me a big fee and you know pay my bank a big fee or I could quit my highly paid job and I could be your partner and you’d get all that for free. And for those those of you had the good fortune of knowing Dr. Cameron. He was an old ScotsIrishman. And there was this long pause and he said, “You know, I like free. ” And that that was the start of it. Oh my gosh. Actually got on a plane and flew back out and we had breakfast at the Grant Street in I get a I hope hopefully I’ll get some type of payment for having said that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and at breakfast, uh, we actually took out a napkin and we wrote down sort of the five key tenants of the business plan. Uh, the first one was children will have access. Mhm. That was the number one uh piece of the business plan. I forget what the other four things were, but that was number one. We each put a dollar on the table. Uh, the original cap table was 5050 each for a dollar. Wow. We shook hands and uh that was it. We started up the company. We had no patents, no no money, no anything. And that that was the genesis of it.

Just just a dream to make proton therapy available for kids. And that’s how it all got going. And so what had you learned about uh their setup at IU? What I mean because obviously you went looked at the equipment. He had given me a tour of it and I I met with uh with Nick who ended up being our chief physicist and I I met with Dr. Thornton who uh was a leader uh in the space back then from a a research and uh cheerleading perspective for proton therapy. So I had a a rudimentary understanding probably probably no better than my understanding now but you know it it it seemed uh to me to be a much better solution if you if you had to go down the road of radiation.

uh you know you you elim eliminate the uh the stray radiation and have it much more targeted and that that made a lot of sense to me and Dr. Cameron’s vision and his ability to you know reduce the cost by a fairly significant factor with some of his innovations and some of the thoughts Nick had on um you know different uh different uh uses of hardware and whatnot. We developed a lot of that once we got the company going. Um that all made sense and um you know I I thought you I could go on raising money for companies that were improving telecom or I could help change the lives of people who are suffering from uh cancer and tumors and I I made the choice and it was a great partnership with Dr.

Jay as we uh as we like to call them. Yeah. So what’s next? So you have a you have a company that’s valued at $2. Yeah. At that point. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That was maybe gonna get you through the on it and made it worth negative. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So what uh what’s next? What’s kind of like the first couple phone calls? Yeah. There there’s uh a couple things. I’ve I’ve done a lot of startups over the years and uh built a lot of businesses actually external and internal to corporations. And there’s two things that matter. One are the people and the second are is the money, right?

You got to have the people who can execute and you got to have the A+ players. So, um, Dr. Cameron and I put together a list of kind of a who’s who list of who we wanted on the team. Uh, and we went out and spoke with them and we got them to join the team and and we figured out how we’re going to raise some money and uh, we did a a little angel round amongst ourselves and raised a little bit of dough and uh, then we did a little bit broader uh, raise. I think we raised probably you know 10ish million dollars uh sort of among friends and families and there’s some fairly amusing stories along the way with that.

Um and then uh at the same time we were talking with um uh lenders uh both here and over in Europe. Uh and strangely I I didn’t realize this even though I was a banker I didn’t do a lot of project finance but uh apparently US banks are not at least at the time we’re not particularly keen in project finance so most of the most of the the fruitful discussions we had were out of Europe a couple out of Australia but uh the the longer term capital we need to develop one of these projects was uh uh something that was going to happen internationally um and then you know we laid out the specs and sort of what equipment we wanted.

And ultimately we uh came to uh rest on working with IBA and one of the reasons we worked with them is they actually were in Belgium and there was some incentives uh through the government there on providing insurance back stops to the lending piece which makes the lenders comfortable and we worked with a lot of uh the local lenders there and putting together the initial capital structure and uh along the way we were fortunate enough to um uh work with a doctor group in uh Oklahoma City. Uh and uh one of the thoughts we had to see is we’re going to need a big equity slug uh next to debt we’re raising.

And we thought, you know, this this has two returns to it. It’s got a nice economic return. So, you know, a sophisticated uh equity investor. We’ll see that. But also has a big psychic return. you know what what it can do for the community, what it can do from from the world perspective and being a showcase for proton therapy and uh literally we uh we we uh put together a list of sort of the the wealthy guys in Oklahoma City and you know we had this list 10 15 guys and um couple of gals on there as well I’m sure and uh my head of bisdev at the time was a guy named James Jarrett and James looked at the list he goes Oh, he goes, “Look at that.

Aubrey McClendon’s on a list there. He He’s my my brother actually works with Aubrey and and James’s brother was I don’t know some junior engineer or something like that. ” But um uh Aubrey had a uh pretty good reputation for being man of the people and they had a nice gym on the Chesapeake campus and Aubrey used to work out every morning there at like 6:00 in the morning and uh James’s brother uh used to work out around the same time. So God’s honest true story. Uh Aubrey’s on the treadmill like walking or running or whatever he’s doing and and James’s brother goes over gets on the next treadmill.

He’s like, “Yay, Mr. McClendon. ” Then Aubrey was great at remembering people’s names. So he says, you know, I can’t remember James’s brother’s name. So she says, “Yeah, hey, James’s brother. How you doing? What’s new? ” Yeah. And he says, “Well, you know, my brother’s working on this project. ” And he explains the project while they’re on side by side on the treadmills. And Aubrey says, “Geez, you you should have uh have your have your brother call uh you know, my consiguary, my uh my my good friend Shannon Self. Yeah. helped Aubrey with kind of all his uh family office investing and whatnot. And Aubrey, as you may remember, was a big big booster for Oklahoma City, man.

Did tons tons of good work when, you know, sort of redeveloping the downtown and bringing the thunder to town. And he he thought this project was just a perfect uh uh a perfect fit with what his vision for the city was for. Um so he he he became the big uh equity component next to debt. Actually there’s an amusing component to that as well. Um you know he’s doing his diligence and he had his his whole team and whatnot. And at one point he said okay we have to have dinner and all the parties can come together. So we had our our physician group and we had the procure team and we had Aubrey’s team and we went to one of his restaurants.

I forget which one. And we had Red Prime, I think. Was it Red Prime Steakhouse? I don’t think it was Red Prime. Actually, I know it wasn’t Red Prime. We’d had a bunch of meetings there in that old silo thing, but um uh it was one of the other ones. Um had a big room in the back. Can’t remember. Very Yeah, it was the one that was It’s not there anymore. It was by It was by the campus. It was by the Chesape campus. Exactly. That’s the one. It’s a big big room in the back. Very kind of oldw world looking. Big table. We must have had 20 people around the table and and I’m sitting right next to Aubrey and he he kind of stops.

I think it was kind of after the dinner before dessert arrived. He says, “Oh, you know, why don’t we it’s been a very pleasant dinner. Let’s get down to business. Why don’t we go around the table, everyone can introduce themselves to everyone and kind of how they got involved with proton therapy kind of similar to the questions you’re asking me. ” And it it moves off to his left and I’m sitting to his immediate right and it goes around the table and you know I’m Dr. Goat, I’m Dr. Taylor, I’m John. You know, it goes around and around and it it comes to uh uh James Jarrett who’s sitting to my right.

He says about his business development background, tells the story about his brother. Everyone gets a chuckle and then it comes to me and I just give a little sort of quick CV and I’m going to hand it back off to Aubrey and then James who had a little bit too much of uh Aubrey’s fine wine. You know Aubrey always always set a good table. He says he says oh you didn’t tell Aubrey about uh how you were a juggler uh in Europe back in the day. And I said no. I said, “James, yeah, I’m sure Aubrey’s not particularly interested in my vagabound youth. He’s probably more interested in the merits of the deal and all this good stuff.

” And Aubrey looks at me and says, “Oh, you you were a a juggler in Europe. ” I said, “Yeah, yeah, I was juggler in Europe for a couple of years. ” Yeah. And uh he says, “Oh, you know, one of my childhood best friends was a juggler in Europe. Maybe you know him. ” And I’m thinking, you know, like all the juggling, what are the chances, right? Yeah. And and I said, ‘Well, yeah, you know, maybe Aubrey. What what was his name? And Aubrey says, “Scotty. ” And I finish the sentence. I say, “Hton. ” Scotty was my juggling partner. It was a good friend.

Aubrey takes out his phone, calls Scotty from the table. Oh my gosh. It says, “What kind of guy is this guy Hadley? ” And it’s like, you hear this? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Aubre’s asking questions the way he does. Conversation goes back and forth for five minutes. The room is dead silent. Aubrey hangs up the phone. He goes, “You checked out. ” Says, “Give me that big bottle of wine and hand over like a Magnum or Jerobo, big things. ” He takes out a silver uh Sharpie out of his pocket, kind of whips it out, and he’s like, he signs on the label, looks across the table to the guy leading the diligence, John Fick, he goes, “How much money did we say?

” John says, “X. ” He writes down X. says, “What percentage of the company are we going to get? ” John says, “Why? ” Writes down why. Aubrey signs it. He goes, “You sign this. ” Okay. I sign it. Terms never change. We closed the deal on those terms. That’s unbelievable. Contract written on a wine bottle. Yeah. And you got And you had the wine bottle at the corporate office, right? Yeah. We actually had we made another copy. So we we had two bottles. So he kept the original original and then we we created a replica that we had at the corporate office. Yeah. That’s that’s amazing.

So yeah, when you’re going through, you know, document retention, it’s like, oh, well, actually, here’s here’s the contract over here behind this glass case. Yeah, that’s amazing. Oh, exactly. Yeah, it’s pretty good. That story, it’s it’s interesting the the situation with James Jared’s brother and Yeah. running next to Aubrey on the treadmill. Um cuz I had a somewhat similar experience with with this with how I got connected to the center. Uh uh my father-in-law worked for Aubrey. Okay. Um and Aubrey had Founders Club tickets for the Thunder Games. And my father-in-law was an executive vice president. And so we would go, of course, he would go a lot more than I would, but then he would bring his family.

Yeah. Uh his daughter who I was married to, myself, some of his other kids, a couple times a year. Mhm. And so we were in the founders club and I found myself next sitting next to Aubrey at the bar or he walked up as I was ordering a drink and he was about to order a drink and I was I was straight out of grad school, you know, and in grad school they do that training where it’s like, oh, if you ever find yourself sitting on a plane next to a really important person, like what’s the question that you’re going to ask them? Like be prepared.

Yeah. And so I had my like NBA uh school question ready to go and I asked Aubrey, I said I said, “You know, you’ve done a lot of things with your company, but what I’m really curious about is what are you most proud of uh or most interested in that’s not related to Chesapeake Energy, which is a company that everybody knew him for. And he without missing a beat was like, “Oh man, let me tell you about this new cancer center. ” And at the time the proton center in Oklahoma City was just about to open. and he’s like, “Oh, proton therapy and it’s going to change the way cancer’s treated and I’m so excited and I’m a big investor.

” And then he did the whole like, “Oh, you’re young. What are you doing with your life? Uh, you should go check it out. ” You know, I think they’re looking for good people over there. How How is it that I never heard this story before? I don’t know. I don’t know. And so, uh, I was like, uh, you know, I mean, I guess I’m 26 at the time and didn’t have any kids and, uh, it was like, and I was working in the oil and gas industry for a small private oil and gas company. And so, well, you were you were in Oklahoma City, right?

I was in OK. We all have to 98% of the employment. Yeah. We have to serve our time. It’s like living in Israel and serving in the military. You have to serve your two years in oil and gas. And so, but coincidentally, because you guys had hired a recruiting company to kind of staff up the center. Y um and so completely separate from that conversation, I got a call from a recruiter about the business analyst position at the center in Oklahoma City. And I will say if I had gotten that call and I had not just literally had that conversation with Aubrey a week earlier, I don’t think I would have I would have been like, h what is this?

I don’t know anything about it. It’s healthcare. I’m in oil and gas. I’m happy. We’re blowing and going. Oil’s $140 a barrel, whatever. But because I had had that conversation with uh Aubrey and he had sent an email to Ed Burles really, the president was like, “Hey, uh you should talk to this guy. ” So anyways, yeah, it’s kind of random how this thing. Well, we we are very fortunate. I I don’t want to make you blush, but you are a tremendous addition to the team. And uh you know, if if not for you, there wouldn’t still be a proton therapy center in Oklahoma City.

So yeah, it had shut down back in 2018, end of 2018. So we were fortunate to get it back open. So, let’s I mean, let’s maybe talk more about the Oklahoma City Center because you’ve got the money from Aubrey, got access to capital with some lending sources. You’re going to work with IBA. How did the deal I mean, Oklahoma City is kind of random. It’s not I mean, at the time, it’s still not that big of a city, relatively speaking. So, how do you end up in Oklahoma City? Well, the the key piece, and you’ll go back to what I originally said, you know, starts with people and then capital.

You need those two components. And the you know the people part is the driving more important piece. Um so we had uh we had a uh one of our partners in the business guy named Chris Chandler who had been working uh with IBA for a long time and uh was very well known in the proton therapy world. he was doing business development for us and uh he knew a lot of physician groups across the US and we needed a physician group that was a believer in proton therapy and we needed a physician group that was uh willing to stake some of their professional career in proton therapy and uh he said that the group headed up by Dr.

goat and Oklahoma City was the one that fit the best and we came out and met with them and you know that that’s how we picked Oklahoma City uh primarily because we had good physician partners um and that’s really how we we picked uh all of our markets um uh working with the physicians who were going to be supportive of the uh of the technology and that’s that’s how we ended up there was it was it was just that simple and then you know once we picked Oklahoma City as the physician group. That’s where we came up with the the list of potential investors and that’s how Aubrey came up and then it it all kind of went from there.

Um and then we needed a hospital partner and we we spoke with Integress and we spoke with OU and uh we asked them both to uh uh you know put in their their offer on structure and uh uh Integris I think had a a very broad and complete vision for combining it with a cancer center and uh uh working proton therapy in is one of the solution sets in in sort of holistic patient care and um and that really resonated with us. So we we went with Stan Hutfield and uh the Integris team and uh developed the project from there. So was the Oklahoma City center supposed to be the first center or was the Chicago center supposed to be the first center?

Um yeah, Oklahoma City was the the first one. I mean because we were physician group we we were talking with uh Dr. Hartzell and that group. Um but uh Dr. goat and his his physicians were moving in a much more rapid fashion than the group out of Chicago. Yeah. And then it was also one of the one of the things that was always difficult you know proton therapy had been the purview primarily of big academic centers and a lot of research and it was considered a little esoteric at at the time. So the hospitals that you spoke with that it got good traction generally tended to be academic centers and academic centers I don’t know particularly polite way to say about it but you know they they they think they can do it all themselves right they say oh what do we need a third party like a procure who’s going to sort of bring uh you know lower cost and faster implementation to the table you know we’re in the business of building buildings and facilities and we can do that And and we actually had a our COO uh was a guy named John Henderson who was a very talented guy and he developed a slide for our our partnership decks when we go talk with hospitals or academic centers.

And you may actually remember this slide and one half of the slide showed all the component parts of a Ferrari sitting sitting in a driveway, you know, thousands tens of thousands parts. And the next slide showed a Ferrari sitting in a guy’s driveway and it said, “Yeah, you you could buy all the parts and build the car yourself or you could just build just have the car delivered. It’s it’s your we’re the same thing. You know, we we’re we’re obviously not an academic center, but we can deliver a proton therapy center to your driveway, you know, much lower cost anyone else has in the history of proton therapy uh in a much shorter time frame and you’ll have it.

It’s just yeah, you’ll have access to it for your physician groups, your patients, your research, whatever you need. Um, so you know that that was typically a a I would call it a barrier to entry, but a long long lead time when you had a physician group. You needed a hospital partner. Um, and uh it just moved much more quickly in Oklahoma City than it did in Chicago. Well, and I think in Chicago too, didn’t you have to go through a certificate of need process? Uh, yes. the old certificate of need. Don’t don’t talk about that because that was that was your first experience with that too.

So that had to be a little bit of a shock. Yeah. Going through something like that. Yeah. And and and I I I don’t know if uh many of your your viewers are familiar with certificate of need. It’s it’s basically a a guild that keeps all your competition out. It’s something as a throwback to the medieval days that says, “Oh, yeah, you know, we’re going to have the powers that be decide on uh what uh what services can be provided to patients in this area. ” And you know, we we don’t want to have too many proton therapy centers because, you know, god forbid too many people would have access to a world change technology.

So Chicago had one of these certificate of need boards and as you can imagine because it’s basically a gatekeeper to supply these things are just ripe for uh collusion and bribery and you know right before we started our process I think like don’t quote me on this but you know I think the entire certificate of need board had been found guilty of some type of fraud or they had they had gotten rid of everybody people went to jail and they had reconstituted the entire uh yeah co process but they still kept it in place and we went uh we went up to Chicago and um we’d had a falling out uh unfortunately with Dr.

Thornton at the time uh we’d picked someone else to sort of be the the leadership on the the medical side and that Dr. Thornton had joined forces with um I forget the the niu, right? Northern Illinois. Northern Illinois. Yeah. Had joined forces with niu up there. So, you know, we went to go get our co in Chicago. Uh which is that’s a pretty complicated process. A lot of a lot of stuff you got to fill out. You actually have to go to public hearings and all this sort of stuff. And we we went in the first round and the niu guys uh threw a bunch of dust in the air and uh you know sort of confused the entire situation and and you know they said that we’re going to build one and I guess they’re more politically connected than we were and uh the co said that we were denied and uh the the great um sort of crime in all this is that niu was no closer to having a proton therapy center than kind of the homeless guy in a corner in LA.

Right. Right. Right. You know, they they claim that they had a piece of property. They claim they had it financed, but this is not for the faint of heart. I mean, right. You know, these projects are extremely sophisticated. Uh you know, they as much concrete in one floor as there is in an eight-story building, you know, more more electronics and and compute power than you have sending, you know, the Aremis moonshot. Um yeah, very complex. Uh, and uh, you know, they claimed they had it all lined up. Uh but you know, we we we actually set up a camera on their job site and set up a doomsday clock and uh put put this thing up on the web.

So if anyone ever searched for niu, it’s the first thing that would pop up with the lies that they told and this this literally a webcam on a telephone pole that showed this empty lot with a rusty chain around it and the amount of time they had left to finish the project based on what they told the co board with a list of like all the fastest uh proton therapy centers ever built in the history of the world. And it was clear they were never gonna have this thing built in a time. It was clear they weren’t even building it. Um, and there’s the part I I still can’t believe.

So, you know, it took us like another year. We got back in front of the co and the niu team showed up again. Oh my god. They were so pissed off that we put this website up that they actually had printed out screenshot after screenshot after screenshot of the website saying look what these jerks have done like the these are bad people putting up this website and they gave these screenshots to the co board. The co the co board like looks at the pieces of paper and goes well looks to us like you’re not going to finish this in time. We approve, we approve procure.

Oh my gosh. Sort of they sort of like shot themselves in the foot with that whole process. But then we got the green light and we went forward and of course we built a marvelous uh marvelous center up there with Central DuPage and I think it’s actually might be Northwestern who’s the hospital partner now. Yeah. Yeah. They they ended up buying it. Yeah. What’s uh Yeah. Well, because Northwestern I think bought Central DuPage. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. a strange uh strange coincidence like the number two finance guy at Central to Page uh is a is a guy who is now the CFO of Scripts and I ran into him the other day.

Oh, really? Who is who is that? Um Gez, I’m drawing a blank on drawing a blank on his name, but you you you’d remember him. He he worked for he worked for Jim. Um he was Brett Brett Tandy. That’s his name. Okay. Yeah. He he was the ex I think Morgan Stanley guy. Okay. But uh you know small small world I still run into people who are associated with the projects. I went up to Chicago probably I want to say it was well I think it was when I was had joined provision in Knoxville. So this would have been like 2014 15 something like that.

So yeah, 5 years after the Chicago Center opened and some when I went up there, somebody took me out to and pointed out the Northern Illinois site and it still was empty and it still had chain link around it. Oh yeah, I know. Well, I guarantee if you go back there today, it’s still empty and still it’s probably still empty and there’s still chain link around it. Yeah, I guarantee. you know, and I was I was such a it’s going to sound strange for you know, Wall Street guy saying this, but you know, I was just kind of a na naive babe in the woods thinking like everyone’s focused on doing the right thing for the patient, but yeah, it’s exceptionally political.

We we had a situation in Jersey, this one’s this one’s even more bizarre. So, you know, John Henderson, who’s, you know, was our COO, he basically is a, you know, kind of a building and and real estate uh expert par excelance and um we’re trying to get permits in New Jersey to build our center there. And um we can’t get the permits and and like like months and months and months and months. I’m like, John, like what the heck? He’s like, I don’t know. We keep going to this one committee and they keep shooting us down. I’m like, God, I can’t believe it. Um, yeah.

And I kid you not, I lived in New York at the time. And I used to get three papers every morning. The Times, the Journal, and of course the paper record, the New York Post. And right, the only one of which in today day and age, I still get the Post. I get that online. I don’t get the Journal or Times anymore. I still get the Post. And I got my coffee. I got the three papers. I open the door. I’m going back to the kitchen table. And there the front page of the post is a guy in New Jersey in handcuffs being arrested for having taken bribes to approve projects.

He was the chair of the committee we could never get. Oh my gosh. And and not only that, you can go back and look this up. He was also accused of and ultimately found guilty of trading in body parts. Like he had this Oh my gosh. He had this black market thing where he was dealing like buying like kidneys and livers and things like that. Oh my gosh. And then selling them on the black market. It’s a really bad guy. He’d been the guy. And we didn’t know again too naive babe in the woods. You needed to grease that guy’s palm to get through. You needed to bribe him with some body bribe him needed.

Fortunately fortunately the the good authorities in New Jersey cleaned that up and literally like the next week we got approval on building. Well, they talk, you know, there’s the old adage like uh you know, I’d give a kidney to get this project done, get this deal done, whatever. Like, literally, you have to give a kidney. Believe me, I would I would had I known if had I would have just delivered it in a little ice box to me, we would approve months earlier. Oh my gosh. So, uh in Oklahoma, I guess you didn’t have the same, uh permitting issues in Oklahoma. No, Oklahoma. I look, I it’s, you know, give a little booster for Oklahoma City.

Yeah. I I grew up I was I was born in North Carolina. and I lived in Florida for a while, but pretty much grew up in the Northeast. And um yeah, I never I never knew anything about Oklahoma. It’s just like something off the map. So, you know, I had I had these preconceived notions of what Oklahoma was going to be like. Uh but it was like I I mean, I I would live there if I had a way to make a living there. I mean, yeah, I was just blown away. It was like the nicest people. Yeah. Like the greatest city, you know? There was like a whole refurbishment going on downtown at the time.

It was like one cool restaurant, one cool club after another. Um, it was so easy to do business. Everyone would take a meeting. They they’d hear you out. Uh, it was uh it was great. I mean, it was it was I I recommend anyone trying to do business to go do it in Oklahoma, Oklahoma City in particular. I I just I fell in love with the city, the people, and the project was uh fantastic. I mean, it was it it all came together. And I don’t know that it could have come together that well any place else. So, it was really like the the base that created the entire company for what we did in Chicago, Seattle, New Jersey.

Um, you know, it was uh it just was that easy. Like it like if all that crap had happened in Chicago first, you know, I’m not sure we would we would have, you know, made it through or gone on, but you know, we’d had that success in Oklahoma City. So we know we could make it work and uh it gave us a lot of confidence and uh it was uh it was just a great place to start. So two things I want to point out because I do think that these had a big impact on the proton industry. One you guys got the project done in Oklahoma City in about 24 months which was unheard of at the time.

I mean like I think I think we got it done for under hund00 million too. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that compares to like three years and 200 and something million for the the last project that got done. And that’s what Right. And that’s if if you if you were to ask at the time that that’s what people would have said these are $200 million projects. It’s going to take three plus years, right? Yep. So there’s the there’s the cost, there’s the time to get the project done, but it was also the first community proton center. So the previous five were all academic affiliated or part of academic institutions.

So this was the first time that you proved out this concept or model of bringing proton therapy into the community setting. Yeah. And in in the US 80% of cancer patients are treated at community cancer centers. Those are all the stats we looked at when we came up with the plan. People know the big academic centers and it’s great and they do a lot of the research and they’re very innovative, but most patients actually are treated at these community centers. So, if you want to create access for patients, which was your vision and Dr. Cameron’s vision, then you’ve got to go into this community setting.

Yeah. So, what was I mean, what was kind of the emotions for you? I guess first at groundbreaking because that’s a big milestone like shovel in the ground. Yeah. And then the first day when that first treatment gets delivered. Wow. Um it was it was very emotional. I mean I’ve done a lot of things in my career. There’s nothing that’s more fulfilling than what I did with Procure. I mean it really is uh it really is tremendous. And you know there’s a lot of people working in healthcare will say that. But until you do it yourself, you know, I don’t think it really resonates. But to to actually do something that changes the game and gives access to a tremendous uh technology to people in a local community, to physicians who never thought they’d have access to it, to patients who never thought they’d uh you know be in in that have the ability to be treated that that way.

It it it is a very emotional piece and I remember um and you know it’s not you mention a lot of things. This is a very complex business plan. I still get questions today like what the hell were you thinking? You know that that you’re going to you know reduce the cost by more than 50%. uh you know re reduce the time by you know over a year um work with local physicians and local hospitals uh and and we also set up a uh I don’t think this is wild widely as well known you knew it but you know we we set up a a research component as well.

Yeah. um because we wanted to make sure that not only were you using the treatment but you were you know getting the appropriate research and doing you know the the right protocols and whatnot and there just wasn’t a lot of research outside the academic setting for that and there weren’t a lot of proton therapy centers with a lot of volume doing that. So we knew we were going to be higher volume. We’re going to be community settings and we tried to involve it actually did involve the academic centers uh uh as much as we could um in that research component. Uh so there there was a lot of moving pieces a very complex business plan and you know when it finally comes to fruition it’s it’s almost like a little bit of a miracle.

And I remember uh the the piece of land where the center is now that was nothing. I mean, it was there I think it might still was a bronze ice cream store that was like it’s like you’re driving through nothing and and there’s like this bronze for like no particular reason in the middle of nowhere. And uh we we got the like a big chunk of land right next to that. And I remember walking out and Hendo had told me exactly where it was. He goes, “Go check out the land and see if you like it. ” Like land’s land. Like is there a door nearby?

That was another thing. We had to actually have to pay for a new substation because, you know, the proton uh cyclron uses as much power as a small town. Uh but I I parked in the Bronze parking lot and I just walked out into that field. Uh and I remember it was hot. I remember standing in that field and just just crying just like I been touched by God or something. And uh knew that uh Dr. Cameron’s vision and uh my vision were going to be achieved and that we were going to build uh a state-of-the-art proton therapy center in a community setting be combined with a state-of-the-art cancer center and you know hopefully help reinvent how cancer got treated um and uh that’s ultimately what happened but I remember that and the first the first patient treating treatment was you know sort of even even more so I mean that that part of getting it all set up is complex but you know the actual building of a proton therapy center and I got to give you know full kudos to Hendo on this man we laid out a very aggressive calendar a very aggressive budget and we came favorable to both I mean on on our first project you know it’s just stunning accomplishment um and then when our first patient got treated I mean you almost can’t believe it I mean it’s even today as I sit here today and I know you know there’s four sort of uh pro proton therapy centers that we developed and you know god knows how many else you know kind of are out there based on the staff that sort of went out and propagated guys like yourself went out and worked for other places to make them successful.

Um that’s uh that’s that’s a pretty cool place to be. It’s and I I still I still don’t exactly know how we did it. I was there. I did it. I I negotiated all these things. I ran all these things. Dr. Cameron laid it out. Nick did his bit. Endo did his bit. You know, we we and the nice thing was, you know, we we all got along famously and uh you know, we we had a great uh great partnership amongst each other and you know, I think the the culture was pretty strong and yeah, you know, you’re you’re doing good and doing well by doing good and it was uh it was good times.

So, I do want to you mentioned the registry. So, uh it’s interesting that you bring that up. We just had a call last week um with the director of the New York Proton Center which is affiliated with Memorial Sloan Ketering. Yeah. And we were going he was looking at the registry trial data that we have compiled here in Oklahoma. So, from day one we were trying we were putting 90 plus% of patients on this registry trial. Yeah. And he made the comment on this call. He said he was blown away at the number of patients and the extent of the data and the depth of the data and the quality of the data.

And he said he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. ” He said, “There’s no other center in the country right now that has this collection of registry data. ” Yeah. Um, and so he and so he and his team at Memorial Sun Kettering are really excited to help us put together a paper and we’re going to put we’re going to look at 10 plus year followup. So patients that were treated over 10 years ago um and just how they’re doing and it should look really really good just based on kind of an initial assessment. Um, and there’s I don’t know. I mean, we have over 5,000 patients on the registry trial in Oklahoma, and I don’t know how many centers are part of PCG now, but it’s I bet it’s over 30 centers that are part of PCG.

So, it it is the go-to resource for proton therapy research and proton therapy data. That was the That was the vision. That was vision. That was It’s amazing. Um, so yeah. So that’s in terms of like just impact in the industry. That’s that that is kind of we don’t think about that. You see the building. That’s good to hear. That’s good to hear. That’s it’s still still going strong. So another thing still going strong and so I want to get you to uh talk about this. You remember the patient graduation lunches. Yeah, sure. So just talk about like going to those and what that was like as as those were getting set up and just the experience of of going you’re s you’re sort of leading the witness here because you know the story I’m going to tell.

Yeah. So fair. Yeah. One one of the things that uh uh I think it was originally might have been Hendo’s idea, might have been Nick’s idea. I can’t remember whose idea it was, but you know, we thought, you know, it it is a tight community and we really want to build awareness and we want to build uh community amongst the people who have uh uh had had uh the treatment. Um so we had these patient lunches uh and we we had challenge coins that were given to people who graduated from uh treatment and uh the patient lunches were twofold. One was a celebration of people who had finished their treatment but it was also an educational component for people who were in treatment or even people who were considering getting treatment uh to come and meet existing patients, patients who graduated and whatnot.

And it it was just a great event. Um, and I I used to go around and I’m I’m a big believer in um, sort of being on the ground, not just sitting in some office somewhere. So, I I would go from center to center to center. And I I work very well remotely. And I probably, you know, at the time, you know, maybe we had two centers open, couple under construction. So, you know, I’d be traveling around the country and I came into Oklahoma City and anytime I’d come to Oklahoma City, I’d say, you know, if there’s a lunchon, yeah, I’d like to say a few words.

Um, so I happened to be in town and they they had a lunchon going on. And they said, “Oh, Hadley, you’re going to speak right after this young patient uh from Holland who’s going to talk. ” And I said, “Okay, that’s fine. ” And um I I always get emotional just thinking about this because it it sort of encapsulates the uh the entire um sort of reason that you do something entrepreneurial and do something entrepreneurial in healthcare and the whole vision that Dr. Jay had and that that he got me to buy into. and um this young woman got up and uh she was maybe 10, 11 years old.

I can’t remember how old she was, but young. And um from Holland and she actually spoke English very well, probably better than I do. And uh she stood up and she said, you know, my name is and she said, I had this terrible diagnosis where a tumor was, you know, wrapped around my spine. And um all the local doctors in Holland said that uh some of them said it was inoperable. Some said that they could operate uh but I’d never walk again. And uh my mother um did some research and she found out about the proton therapy center in Oklahoma City and the program they had for kids and uh also what we put in place because remember the first thing on our business plan with Dr.

Jay and myself was kids get treatment. Uh we put together a charitable piece. We couldn’t pay for the health care component of it. That wasn’t allowed by reg regulations which always struck me as odd. But be it as it may, we covered all the other expenses. So travel, hotel, food, whatnot for kids and their families who needed to undergo treatment. And you know, this was a um I think it was a little bit of a visionary piece that we had as well because you know, you could be there for a month, 45 days, but we would cover all those expenses or help defay them uh to whatever uh amount the co the family needed.

So her mom had researched all this and had discovered the Oklahoma City Proton Therapy Center and the two of them flew to Oklahoma City and she got treatment and um she came into the center and we treated the the tumor with proton therapy and did exactly what proton therapy does which is destroy the tumor without affecting the surrounding tissue. And this little girl stood up there and she said, “The the doctors told me I would never walk again. ” And she put the microphone down and she skipped down to hug her mother. And uh I could I could barely talk. I stood up and I took the microphone.

I said, “I got nothing else to say. ” Yeah. That was that. But you know, you see you see something like that and uh you know, you know, you’ve done the right thing. You know, you you often wonder, what can I do with my life? What do I want to do every day when I get out of bed? And that that got answered for me in that one moment. And I I can die a happy man knowing I saved one little girl’s uh life for her. Yeah, that’s amazing. you not not me personally but the team as a whole but being a part of that team it is amazing and you you were a part of that team I mean you you were there and uh you know it it it does take great people to do it and we did have a great team and uh you know it was uh it was it was good good time good center so on on the foundation note and I’m glad you brought that up because another one of the legacies that procure created was having this concept of a foundation because with proton centers you get a lot of patients that travel.

They’re unique, limited resources. We were having families come over from international destinations and so we we still have a foundation that’s modeled after the procure. What was the was it the procure uh what what did we call that foundation? Oh, I something something foundation. I don’t know. Procure cares or something like that. Yeah. Well, we have a foundation called the Proton Pals Foundation here locally and it was actually started by a couple of former patients and then the grandmom of a pediatric patient and they started it about 10 years ago with the purpose of helping patients with cost of travel. That’s fantastic. Well, that we did something unique uh a few weeks ago.

We had a pediatric patient that was treated here for a very aggressive brain tumor when he was about two years old or actually less than two years old. He had less than a 50% chance of even surviving to his seventh birthday. So fiveear survival. Um he got proton therapy. Um and he just graduated high school in May. And the Proton Pals Foundation presented him with a scholarship uh to go to college. Oh, that’s that is very cool. And I will say I’m tearing up thinking about it because it like we were we were looking at pictures of him when he was up here as a 2-year-old and then and he had not been back to the facility.

So he didn’t even remember necessarily what the facility was like and his parents hadn’t been back in se basically 17 years. I think he was treated in 2000 right after we opened or 16 years because it was 2010. Wow. Um and so they walked in and they’re walking through the facility and they’re reminiscing and we had some of the uh pediatric team that’s since retired from when he was getting treated come back and we had a little reunion. But it was just a really I don’t know it was cool to see kind of that come full circle with both the foundational element and the pediatric element.

That is that is uh that is very cool. That is it. But those those are all the pieces you know that uh I got to give Dr. Jake credit for the the vision and Nick credit for the vision and uh you know we we wanted to make sure that it was a full community setting that that people had access to the technology um and that uh you know it’s an old saw you know from going to school you can’t uh you can’t can’t manage if you don’t measure and that’s why we set up the research piece and you know you got to give access unfortunately money is a big part of the access and you I’m sure you’re still dealing with all the, you know, the David Spade insurance things.

No, no, no, no. So, you know, it’s we we had, you know, another piece that we set up at Proare, what I call the insurance warriors that those Yeah. the group that we had up there in the second floor, and I’d go sit with them. I’d make outbound calls myself to the insurance companies, understand what the the problems were. So, you know, we want to take care of research. We want to take care of expenses. We want to take care of insurance. We wanted to make this as simple as, you know, I unfortunately have a tumor. The best technology to treat it is proton therapy and just make access to it, payment for it, just take all the worry out of it and make sure that you know that you’re getting something that’s good.

And that’s the research component of it. You know, you don’t you don’t want to use um limited slots that you have in a proton therapy center for something that’s, you know, just going to make you a buck. you want to make it most impactful. So you need the research component of that, but then people need to have access to it. Their insurance company needs to pay for it. And you know, if you got to stay in a hotel, you got to be able to pay for that. So we we tried to make it a holistic piece around all those components. And that was the original mindset in working with a hospital partner on the the other attendant cancer services is you’re going to need more than just you know the proton therapy as part of your treatment and just make sure that that was as easy and accessible as possible.

So you know that that was that was the overall vision and uh I think I think we got pretty close to it and it’s good to hear a lot of those pieces are are still carrying on. So, do you um do you recall a a conversation because I think I I remember having some uh interactions with you early on where you expressed surprise at the way that the insurance companies were approaching coverage. Um I think you know there’s you learn about the CO process and how that’s uh oftentimes this big collusion and then you run into insurance companies. So, what what do you remember about some of those conversations and just how shocking maybe it was?

I remember one I won’t name the insurance company, but one of the big healthc care coverage uh companies, their medical director, the actual like big dog medical director uh came down actually I I mean we were pounding and pounding and he actually came down to the center or maybe I had the meeting in his office. I can’t remember. Anyway, either I was at his office or he came down to the center. Uh, and my memory is it was in that conference room on the second floor there that over the uh the lobby. Um, and uh he said to me, you know, Adley, this is, you know, no recording, nothing on the record.

He goes, yeah, it’s just sort of off the record. You know, I’m going to tell you a couple of facts and how the insurance company, and we’re not alone in thinking about it this way, thinks about cancer care. And he said, uh, you know, um, cancer skews older, right? You know, I think we can all agree if kids get cancer, you got to pay for you got to get them treatment. He said, but you know, cancer skews older and at some point people are going to age out into Medicare. And uh he said, you know, so our our strategy and you know, I I’ll even stipulate that proton therapy is better than than photon.

Yeah. But you know, our strategy is to say no and and age as many into Medicare as we can so we don’t have to cover it. And yeah, to this day, my jaw is on the floor. I mean, right, I I had a strong enough personal relationship with him that I appreciated the cander, but at the same time, I wish he had just stopped after saying, “Let’s stipulate proton therapy is better. ” Right. Right. And not got into the the business model aspect of it. But you did you did get those issues, you know, and unfortunately people are driven by economics, you know, rather than than the right thing to do.

The other part was the the physician part. You know, it’s you’d run into these guys who had the inoff exception with photon equipment and they made they made a lot of money in photon therapy and they they would not even consider uh you know sort of sending their patients to a proton therapy center even if it was better technology. Yeah. Um and I remember a conversation with a physician in New Jersey ahead of a big group and I said, “Yeah, why don’t we little partner? we’ll give you some we’ll give you some uh expedited access to the proton therapy center here. He said he said you know I I just make more money on proton therapy and literally the word he said he said I have a mortgage to pay and my kid has braces.

Yeah. I mean it’s it’s unfortunate fact and the economic piece drives a lot of these decisions which is another reason why we really wanted to do the research piece because we our our mindset was it’s it’s a long game. Um, and you got to have excellent research and you got to have those longitudinal studies that show not just that you have better uh better short-term results, but that you have better long-term results because, you know, one of the the big impacts of, you know, going down the photon route is and and photons, you know, look, if you if you can’t get protons, you know, some of the more sophisticated photon solutions are going to be just fine.

But you know you do you do get all that excess of radiation and there is a chance of secondary tumors and recurrence and all this sort of stuff and you can only show that through time. You know I can make all the arguments I want from science day one but unless you do this the research and do you know kind of the gold standard research you’re not going to be able to prove it. So that’s why we did that. We had a longer term view. Hopefully the studies you’re doing now in in conjunction with MSK are going to uh sort of prove out that uh you know protons are a very viable alternative for a lot of different cancer sites.

Yeah, there was a study that MD Anderson just published um and they it was a randomized trial. So they actually did a blinded randomized trial which is really hard to do when you’re talking with patients about something that delivers more radiation to healthy tissue versus less radiation. They managed. Which arm would you like to be in? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Do you want to be in the arm where you jump out of the plane with the parachute or without the parachute? Because we got to prove the parachute. We got to prove both. Yeah. Uh and so they they showed a a significant decrease in uh the incidence rate of feeding tubes for these head and neck cancer patients.

But what they also showed was a statistically significant increase in overall survival. Oh wow. So, not just not just disease-free survival or risk of secondary malignancies, literally the patients lived longer on the proton arm versus the photon arm. And the theory is is that it was just the side effects were so toxic. Yep. For some patients on the photon arm for head. I’m glad that’s being proven out. I mean we we always we always used to think that and you know I think the the early indicators were that that was true and sort of the anecdotal evidence you had over you know kind of the proton therapy been done in the previous decades was that but you know to actually have it in a RCT is uh that’s pretty damn good.

So talk um just to kind of like close things out just as you look back big picture, how do you think about your time with Procure and just that whole kind of storyline or story arc of your life that you participated in for many years. I I feel I feel blessed that uh I got that phone call from Kevin Cameron. Um, you know, I I think uh I think I can I can die knowing that uh you know, the team and I made a tremendous difference in a lot of people’s lives. And um you know I uh I’m pretty proud of that and uh I just I just very very blessed that uh I was given that opportunity and and blessed that I was able to be successful at it and blessed that uh you know there’s there’s four proton therapy centers that uh Dr.

Cameron and I had a hand in and that they’re treating patients today and you know changing people’s lives. Um, it’s uh it’s it’s pretty unique and I I still run into random people. I I was in a restaurant and some woman stopped by the table and she was a friend of someone at the table and she sat down and somehow it came up that she’d gotten proton therapy at the center in New Jersey. Wow. Had had changed changed her life. And actually random occurrence. The first patient I got treated at the Jersey Center, the absolute first patient was uh an old friend of my father’s randomly.

Wow. Just he called my father up. He said, “I saw your name on the wall at this pro. Are you doing? ” He said, “No, it’s my son. ” I mean it’s yeah it just the these random impacts of people’s lives that has changed and impacted and made you know changed their lives made their lives better made their famil family’s lives better. I mean I just feel blessed that happened to me. You can’t imagine um something like that happening in your life where you you actually make an impact like that and uh it’s I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Well, we still do the the graduation ceremony.

I mean, that was obviously it was a little bit of a leading question. I knew the story you were going to tell, but uh we still do the graduation lunchon and we’re up we still do the coin. It’s the exact same coin. Um and we’re at 6,700, I think, uh graduates here. So, if you uh all four of the centers are open, I mean, the four ProCare centers have to be over 15,000 collective patients at this point that have been treated, which is just it’s it really is amazing. And we have um the our first podcast episode with this podcast that we created a year ago was actually with a pediatric patient who came from England to get treated here in Oklahoma and they came back.

He was about one when he got treated here and they came back and he was uh about 10 years old and so they wanted for them it was closure. Yeah. Um it was the final closure of going back to the facility that had saved his life and he of course again didn’t have any memory of it. Parents hadn’t been back. Um and that was our that was podcast number one that we did with this was pediatric patient that we treated here. I’m glad to see that heritage continue. Kids first. That’s you know it makes a massive difference with kids especially you know you’re going to show this longitudinal study that you know kind of extension of life.

I mean, that’s where it matters with kids. I mean, because, you know, you get treated with one, you got 80 years. You don’t want a lot of poison in your body when you’re one. I don’t really care if I have a lot of poison in my body when I’m 80. I can fake it to the finish line no matter what. But when you’re one, I mean, it makes a massive difference. So, I I’m glad I’m glad to see that uh that that’s continuing. And and and and thanks to you for, you know, keeping the Oklahoma City Center going. that’s, you know, kudos to you and it couldn’t be a better guy who made that work.

So, congrats on that. Well, I appreciate that, Hadley. And we treated uh 793 patients last year. Um, and we are up uh we’re up we’re on pace to do over 800 this year. So, the center’s as busy as it’s ever been. You still use the old KPIs you developed back in the day? We do. Yeah, we still use the V the IMS system. That’s how we still do all our reporting. There’s still a big David table in there. Oh my god. God, when we made that, you know, you I mean your your your viewers should know that that you were an inventor of many of the uh uh the factors of efficiency and treatment that uh we we followed and kept track of to improve the process.

So yeah, it’s pretty cool logging into that software and now now I have other people. Now I have analysts that work for me. Yeah. I’m not the analyst. Yeah. No, believe me, you definitely need that. I was glad you were there and I didn’t have to do it. And I’m sure you’re glad you don’t have to do it, but uh a necess a necessary uh component of of delivering excellent care. Well, we’re so this center is so old, Hadley, and I guess this tell will tell you how old we are now. We’re actually already talking about what’s next. Oh my goodness. I mean, at some you know, at some point the system ends of life or hits end of life.

And so, well, you remember when we we had we had the cycle, we had to replace it. Yeah. The end of life turned out to be a year and a half. Yeah. Uh yeah. So fortunately our Cyclron’s a little bit newer than the rest of the system, but yeah, we’re we’re already having to figure out what what to do and we’re working with IBA on that. So well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on, Hadley. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, David. Anytime, anything you ever need, you just, you know, pick up the phone and call me. I’ll be there. Well, I’m going to come up with a new business idea for you to come and uh come to Oklahoma to work on.

So I love it. Yeah. And and free is free is good. It’s good. I like free. I like free. God rest his soul. He’s a great man. Dr. Jay. Yes, sir. Well, thank you, Hadley. You’re very welcome, David. Thank you. Have have a good rest of your week. The Cancer Project podcast is made possible by the Oklahoma Proton Center, a state-of-the-art cancer center where precision and treatment meets real compassion in care. We’re grateful for their support and for you for spending this time with us. If you’d like to learn more about the Oklahoma Proton Center, you can visit their website at the link below. And if something you heard today resonated, we’d love for you to stick with us.

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