St. Francis Care and Yale-New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Hospital said Tuesday that they’ve signed a letter of intent to explore an oncology partnership to serve the Greater Hartford market.
Potential terms were not disclosed, but the two said any eventual deal would include St. Francis being a part of Smilow clinical trials and disease management programs.
“St. Francis will serve as the northern campus of Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center,” Dr. Thomas Lynch, director of the Yale Cancer Center and chief physician of Smilow, said in a statement. “We intend a strong and complete integration that we expect to be a game-changer for northern Connecticut.”
Lynch said Wednesday morning in a telephone interview with Smilow Executive Director Abe Lopman that the deal would be somewhat of a departure from Yale Cancer Center’s current model, which includes wholly-owned treatment centers across the state.
Any deal would also be a way to increase the percentage of cancer patients who participate in clinical trials, in the hopes of getting them new drugs more quickly.
Oncology partnerships seem to be a trend. St. Francis’ announcement follows Hartford Hospital’s partnership with New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering.
There are certainly competitive considerations. Lynch said Smilow has been treating more Hartford area patients, and sees a partnership with St. Francis as a way to extend services into the area.
But he said what’s most important is that partnerships between providers will improve cancer care in the state.
“Our competition is cancer,” Lopman said. “We want to get rid of cancer”
St. Francis announced a research partnership with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute last month. Several other hospitals in the state, including St. Vincent’s Medical Center and Lawrence + Memorial, have oncology partners, though each arrangement is structured differently.
