$70 Million Cancer Center Is Open

The doctors it was built for are not all here yet.

The building is open. The roster is not. Dignity Health’s new Sierra Pacific Regional Cancer Center in Redding began seeing patients at the end of August, but Mercy’s own leaders say the $70 million campus is still short of the oncologists it was built for — and the help-wanted ads are still up, even with a five-year guarantee of $770,000 a year.

REDDING — Dignity Health spent years, a riverfront site, and $70 million to put North State cancer care under one roof. A month after the Sierra Pacific Regional Cancer Center began seeing patients, the building is further along than the medical staff.

Mercy Medical Center Redding is still recruiting. Open postings for medical oncologists remain on physician boards and general job sites, including listings tied to CommonSpirit Health, Dignity Health Medical Group – North State, ZipRecruiter, the JAMA Career Center, and PracticeMatch. The advertised package is a $770,000 annual salary guarantee for five years, with a work-RVU bonus on top, an $80,000 sign-on bonus, and up to $15,000 in relocation. The guarantee alone is $3.85 million over five years — above the roughly $3.5 million figure circulating locally — and the jobs are still open.

That is the gap this story is about. Redding has the campus. It still doesn't have the roster the campus was designed to hold.

What opened

The center sits at 2396 Henderson Road, along the Sacramento River near the Cypress Avenue Bridge, Cobblestone Shopping Center, and Nur Pon Open Space. It is about 40,000 square feet and two stories. Dignity Health, part of CommonSpirit Health, owns it and operates it through Mercy Medical Center Redding.

A public ribbon-cutting was held August 18, 2026. Patients began arriving the week of August 31. Mercy Foundation North raised more than $11.4 million toward the project, including $3 million from the Sierra Pacific Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Sierra Pacific Industries. CommonSpirit covered the rest. The foundation has called it its largest fundraising campaign in 40 years.

The pitch to patients is simple: one stop instead of a long day scattered across town, or a drive to the Bay Area. The building has 16 exam rooms, up from five at the hospital’s prior clinic setup. Plans include lab, imaging, pharmacy, infusion, and radiation oncology, with room later for non-cancer infusions such as treatments for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, ALS, Crohn’s disease, and Alzheimer’s. Mercy’s oncology program has been Commission on Cancer accredited for 36 years. Officials say nearly half of the more than 3,200 people treated each year already come from outside Redding — Shasta, Tehama, Trinity, Siskiyou, Lassen, and Modoc counties.

Dignity projects the consolidated campus can eventually serve more than 5,000 adult patients a year, up from 3,244 treated last year across four separate Shasta County sites. That projection depends on physicians who are not all on staff.

Four on the floor, seven on the plan

During a July media tour, Mercy Redding President G. Todd Smith said the system had hired more physicians and mid-level providers, but recruitment was still short of the target.

“We’re not to the point where we need to be. We continue to recruit,” Smith said. “I think everybody needs to realize there are nine open positions for every one medical oncologist in the United States. So it’s a tough recruit, but I think we are chipping away at that.”

Officials said the center was running four medical oncologists a day, with a goal of seven. They also need one to two radiation oncologists. Jennifer Reynolds, Mercy’s director of oncology, put it plainly on the tour: “So we have room to grow.” Robert Folden, vice president and chief operating officer, has said the building was planned for seven oncology providers, two radiation oncologists, and separate clinic space for subspecialty care.

As of early September, reporting by the Record Searchlight, radiation oncology was not yet licensed, and Mercy was still working on contracts to cover radiation services. Some care was still being delivered at older Dignity sites. Folden estimated 18 to 24 months to recruit the physicians the center needs, and said temporary locum tenens doctors were filling holes in the meantime. One hired doctor’s start had already slipped to around the first of the year for personal reasons.

Folden also described the market Mercy is buying into. “We compete on a national level for these doctors,” he said. For every physician Mercy interviews, he said, that doctor is probably interviewing at two or three other sites.

The ads are still up

The compensation is not subtle. Current CommonSpirit and Dignity Health Medical Group – North State postings for a Redding medical oncologist list:

• $770,000 a year, guaranteed for five years, plus a work-RVU bonus

• $80,000 sign-on

• Up to $15,000 relocation

• Group-paid medical and dental, malpractice, license, DEA, and renewals

• A 401(k) match advertised at 6 to 11 percent of earnings

The five-year guarantee is $3.85 million before the bonus and the sign-on. Some listings market the whole package as “$870,000+.” A JAMA Career Center posting for the same Redding role carries a closing date of June 3, 2027 — a long window for a job tied to a center that is already open. At least one board states the role does not accept J-1 or H-1B visa candidates. The ads invite both experienced physicians and new graduates, and they still describe the cancer center as opening in 2026.

That is the local story behind a national shortage. Oncology groups and hospital associations have warned for years that demand is outrunning the supply of board-certified medical oncologists, especially outside major metro areas. Smith’s “nine openings for every one oncologist” line is the hospital’s own summary of that market. A riverfront building and a multimillion-dollar guarantee have not closed it.

Retired Redding physician Dr. David Civalier made the same point before the first shovel went in the ground. Speaking to the Redding Rotary Club in 2024, he said cancer specialists expect this kind of facility and that, without it, Redding would not be competitive. “If we don’t build one of these, we have no chance to successfully recruit additional cancer specialists,” he said. The building is here. The recruiting line is still open.

What it means for patients

None of this means the center is empty. Mercy is treating patients. Existing oncologists and nurse practitioners moved over from Hartnell Avenue and the hospital campus. Officials say only about 3 percent of surgical cases have to leave Redding, and those are the highly complex ones. For many North State families, the point of the project is not having to drive to San Francisco or Palo Alto.

The limit is capacity. A center built for seven medical oncologists and two radiation oncologists, with a public promise of thousands more patients a year, cannot run at that pace on four medical oncologists and radiation services still being contracted. Infusion chairs, exam rooms, and a pharmacy do not read a scan or write a chemo plan. Until the ads come down, the $70 million campus is a partial opening — modern, needed, and not yet staffed to the standard Dignity Health used to justify it.

Shasta Unfiltered will update this report if Mercy announces hires or a date for full radiation oncology service.