The center combines an inviting atmosphere — comfortable chairs, fresh flowers and current magazines — with the latest technology.

About 750 women in Hawai'i are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. Surgeon and center medical director Dr. Laura Weldon Hoque sees about 200.

Janis Honda, 53, is one of those patients. She said she welcomes the specialized care at the center. Honda, who lives in Pearl City, works in an orthopedic surgeon's office across town but didn't feel that she got the same kind of caring attention in the past.

She likes the center's atmosphere and the philosophy. "It's very comfortable," she said. "They don't make you wait, like for the test results. They know how worried you are."

Honda said she had such a bad experience with a technician at another office several years ago that she stopped getting routine mammograms for about five years. She said that technician made her retake the painful mammogram repeatedly.

By the time she went back to getting the test two years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the women's center, she feels more at ease with the staff members. She said she is doing well after surgery — a mastectomy — chemotherapy and radiation.

She follows up with mammograms every six months and plans to do all her follow-up work at the center.

Hoque said the big advantage in putting most specialists under one roof for patients is that it helps ease the time, hassle and worry associated with the disease. She said chemotherapy and radiation are still done elsewhere.

She said the digital mammography shortens the length of the exam to about five minutes but doesn't change the basic compression process that women find painful.

Hoque said the stereotactic breast biopsy table makes it possible for a woman to go from a screening test that showed a potential problem to an in-office procedure to sample tissue for further diagnosis. The other previous options were waiting for another appointment or scheduling traditional surgery, she said.