There is strength in numbers.
When this strength comes in the form of an alliance between renowned cancer scientists and physicians — all working together on innovative research and treatment methods to determine successful outcomes — cancer has a unified, formidable foe. Its patients have comprehensive, cutting-edge care.
The partnership between Smilow Cancer Hospital and Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center — part of Trinity Health Of New England — is built on many things; among them a well-forged relationship, robust history and a determined search for a cure.
Groundbreaking clinical-trial access is only one of the many benefits.
“This is bringing cancer care to the next level, in a well-oiled, multidisciplinary approach,” said Dr. John Rodis, president of Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center, of the partnership. “We have state-of-the-art imaging, biopsies, surgeries— it’s our Saint Francis physicians and those from Yale, with surgeons, radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists — all working together discussing your care. It’s a tailored treatment plan and information on clinical trials. Our goal is to provide high-tech, yet high-touch, patient-centered care to the patients of our community.”
And it’s all right in Hartford.
Rock-solid foundation
Smilow Cancer Hospital has its foot firmly planted in the future of healthcare as it relates to the disease, with myriad research efforts underway at all times.
But Abe Lopman, Smilow’s senior vice president of operations and executive director, notes that especially in terms of cancer care, Yale New Haven Hospital — the Yale University teaching hospital of which Smilow facility is a part — has always been a step ahead as well.
“We are the site of the first chemotherapy in the world; it was delivered here at Yale,” Lopman said.
Yale Cancer Center, a collaboration between physicians and scientists from Yale School of Medicine and Smilow Cancer Hospital, is the only National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Center in Connecticut, said Lopman, and was one of the very first established, during President Richard Nixon’s War on Cancer in the early 1970s.
“Being an NCI-designated cancer center reflects that we are a major resource in the field of cancer,” added Arthur Lemay, executive director, Smilow Cancer Network, especially in the area of clinical trials.
National cancer centers like Yale base their areas of study and treatment on what best benefits patients in the communities where they are located, offering potentially key information that can be used for national cancer priorities in treatment and areas of study as well.
Team approach
Saint Francis Hospital has been at the forefront of cancer innovation in its own right. For example, it was the first in the state to introduce the CyberKnife, a non-surgical option in treating tumors of the spinal cord, prostate, brain, lung and stomach.
Rodis said the hospital has long standing relationship with Yale New Haven Health in areas of training and clinical collaboration, including aspects of its cardiac program, transplant surgery, and in the form of surgical sub-specialty partnerships. The hospitals’ cancer efforts were of the same high-quality caliber, with dedicated, skilled physicians and researchers and a patient-centered care model. The 2015 announcement of the Saint Francis-Smilow partnership, then, was a logical step. The value to patients was undeniable.
We have a solid, strong cancer hospital,” Rodis said of Saint Francis, “and saw benefit in partnering with a branded organization. We felt we could have a strong, solid, symbiotic, true partnership — not just a brand on a billboard — but a truly, integrated program. [Smilow] met that need.”
In the industry overall, other hospitals had begun teaming up with larger cancer hospitals, he said, such as Hartford HealthCare’s Cancer Institute and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a partnership announced in 2014.
Patients win
Dr. Jonathan Sporn is medical director of the oncology service line at Saint Francis Hospital. He said that the partnership with Smilow is empowering for all concerned. “As a clinician, it provides great value to me in terms of what I can do for my patients, such as access to high-level clinical trials we wouldn’t have had access to before.”
Fortunately, the new alliance did not require major overhauls on the administrative or clinical sides.
With both Saint Francis and Smilow having a similar culture of high-quality care and the best patient-centered outcomes possible, the process of teaming up the two organizations only needed some tweaking, said Kathleen Noone, the regional executive director of oncology for Trinity and executive director of the oncology service line at Saint Francis Hospital.
“Philosophically, we were so similar in terms of quality focus and expectations,” she said. Where the cultures of the two organizations were in sync, “with national procedures around oncology and the handling of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) requirements. In other areas we had to make sure we were aligned, as some interpretation of national standards differed,” she said.
In the interest of delivering the best care possible, Smilow and Saint Francis quality and patient-feedback measures also had to be in line, said Noone, “so patient care becomes more predictable across locations,” with streamlined benchmarks established across the system.
Another significant advantage of the hospitals’ partnership is that patients undergoing treatment for cancer have a great breadth and depth of knowledge at their disposal in the form of comprehensive collaborations. This offers oncology patients a deeper level of integrative care and convenience, with expert specialists right in system.
Saint Francis also offers all wrap-around services patient might need, including rehabilitation before, during or after treatment, as well as integrative medicine services. On-site pharmacists are essential in not only preparing medications but in monitoring medications for side effects and toxicity, something especially important now that new oral agents are becoming available.
For now, whatever isn’t offered in Hartford can be done in Smilow’s New Haven location, with facilitation and follow-up care done in Hartford. Telehealth is another way doctors can overcome barriers and offer quality healthcare from afar, if needed, utilizing technology for patients’ betterment and convenience.
It’s the profound capability of the hospitals’ partnership in terms of cancer care and future research that has healthcare teams in both facilities truly excited.
“I am very proud of all that the teams’ from both organizations have accomplished,” said Noone of Saint Francis, of the innovation aspect of patient-centered care.
“The area around the genome is where we focus,” said Lopman, of Smilow. “Immunotherapy is the body’s own way to fight cancer. When you can get to a point where you can understand how to stop tumors and keep them from growing … not with chemo, but with therapy that triggers the body’s own ability to target cancer? Attracting top [research] talent is not a challenge to us. People want to be where the new discoveries are and where they are supported.”
