Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center

Oakland Ranks Among Nation’s Best Cancer Centers

Located just north of downtown, Oakland Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente’s 349-bed flagship hospital, is home to some of the nation’s best mesothelioma doctors and surgeons. Oakland Medical Center opened in 1942 and later became the first Kaiser Permanente hospital. It is now a leading treatment center for cancer care.

U.S. News & World Report rated all Kaiser Permanente hospitals “high performing” across multiple specialties in its 2021-22 Best Hospitals rankings. Only the top 10% to 20% of over 4,500 hospitals nationwide received the high performer designation.

At Oakland Medical Center, patients have access to one of the nation’s best thoracic surgery departments, which offers the latest mesothelioma treatments and equipment. Doctors at Oakland Medical Center provide personalized multimodal treatment plans consisting of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and innovative clinical trials.

Together with Richmond Medical Center, Oakland Medical Center serves Kaiser Permanente’s East Bay area in Northern California. These two centers are home to about 700 physicians caring for more than 250,000 patients every year. Many physicians at Oakland Medical Center also teach at the renowned University of California San Francisco.

Oakland Medical Center provides specialized care for several complicated conditions, including genetic disorders, pediatric neurosurgery and spinal surgery. The center also employs caregivers trained to assist patients in languages such as Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese and American Sign Language.

Surgeons at Oakland Offer Specialized Mesothelioma Treatment

Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center is working to become the new standard for mesothelioma surgery on the West Coast. Dr. Jeffrey Velotta is an experienced thoracic surgeon and mesothelioma researcher at Oakland Medical Center. He trained under mesothelioma pioneer Dr. David Sugarbaker at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Velotta believes patients who want to live longer will opt for aggressive surgeries.

“If patients know they can get another couple years of life, they’ll go for the big surgery,” Velotta told The Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com.

Since 2015, Oakland Medical Center has regionalized its surgical services so that mesothelioma patients have access to several specialists in one area. After regionalizing, patients began receiving more curative treatments rather than just palliative or hospice care.

Surgical specialization at Oakland Medical Center extends to diagnosis as well. During surgery, doctors have access to intraoperative pathology in which they take biopsy samples and receive a diagnosis within 30 minutes while the patient is still in surgery.

Another method called Rapid Case Ascertainment flags any abnormal mesothelial cells for the center’s mesothelioma experts to discuss in a multidisciplinary tumor board every week. A prompt and accurate mesothelioma diagnosis can significantly improve treatment availability and patient outcomes.

Oakland Medical Center’s Mesothelioma Clinical Trials