DICKINSON (AP) - The oncology program at St. Joseph's Hospital and Health Center is closing next month, after an analysis by the hospital's chief executive officer that surprised hospital board members.

Board members and community residents had thought for years that St. Joseph's financial problems could be eased if more area residents would get health care in Dickinson instead of going somewhere else. And they thought St. Joseph's primary market could support an oncology center to save people from traveling great distances for cancer treatment.

CEO Claudia Eisenmann, after analyzing St. Joseph's finances, said the hospital is getting the lion's share of patients in its primary market.

The decision to open the cancer center was based on national statistics, Eisenmann said, and not on regional figures that reflected St. Joseph's market. By the time the new oncology program opened in a new addition in 2000, the reimbursements for cancer treatment were basically slashed in half.

"My first reaction was kind of like 'Oh, my goodness, where are we going to go now?' because it was a surprise," St. Joseph's board President Nancy Johnson said. "Basically, we understood if we could get a surgeon, we could be moving along in the right direction. It was surprising to me that we are in that kind of a struggle."

Board Treasurer Tom Ribb, who has served on the hospital's Finance Committee for about three years, said board members were "operating under some assumptions that apparently are not valid."

"We certainly have been looking at the data incorrectly," Board Vice President Guy Moos said. "And she (Eisenmann) certainly presented a different way to look at it and seemed to make some common sense as to why things are the way they are."

Eisenmann told the board that the oncology program adds $900,000 a year in red ink. The hospital's operating loss since 2002 is projected at $13.2 million through the end of this month.

St. Joseph's hospital, owned by Catholic Health Initiatives in Denver, has purchased fewer supplies, held back salary increases and made other belt-tightening moves.

"Prior administrators had strengths in a lot of other areas, but I don't think they had a real strength in marketing, the data analysis," Moos said.

Board members looked at the budget for the new fiscal year that starts July 1, and at areas for change, he said.

"The recommendation was more or less to address the cancer care center as the Number 1 thing we had to deal with," Moos said.

"It was an emotional part of the meeting that we had when we addressed the actually closure," he said. "All we can really say is, we certainly put forth a grand effort to make it work. "

The community did benefit a great deal in terms of just the charity care while it was open."

A spokesman for Catholic Health Initiatives did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

"This is their (Catholic Health Initiatives') facility and we are in a sense, kind of in limbo land, waiting for their response with the direction they would like to take with this facility," Johnson said.

"This is all relatively new information for them. They need some time to work with their people to digest that."