By John Burton
MIDDLETOWN – Cancer care just reached a new level for many patients with the joining of two medical institutions and brands.
Memorial Sloan Kettering and Hackensack Meridian Health announced a partnering that will be able to provide a wide range of services and treatments and increased convenience for patients and families facing a cancer diagnosis.
“It is really a transformational type of partnership. There is really nothing like it,” said Robert Garrett, co-chief executive officer for Hackensack Meridian Health.
This strategic partnership, Garrett said, will allow two leaders in the medical treatment community, in its co-branding, to collaborate on cancer care and research, in addition to now allowing patients the opportunity to seek treatment and physicians affiliated with either and both institutions.
“They’ll be able to pick and choose, go back and forth,” Garrett said, explaining that a newly formed team made up of professionals from both Sloan Kettering and Hackensack will establish criteria “used across all of our cancer centers.”
MSK has recently opened its Monmouth out-patient facility, located just off Garden State Parkway Exit 114 in Middletown. The strategy for that location, MSK representatives said, was to offer patients and families from the Ocean-Monmouth-Middlesex counties-area the ability to avoid making the trip to MSK’s New York City or Basking Ridge treatment centers, which adds travel to the stress of treatment. The thought is this new initiative will greater enhance the ability for patients to receive a wide-array of treatment options in reasonably accessible locations.
MSK plans on opening an additional site in Montvale in the coming year.
Hackensack Meridian offers cancer treatment at its John Theurer Cancer Center, at Hackensack University Medical Center, Hackensack; Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune; Riverview Medical Center, Red Bank; Bayshore Community Hospital, Holmdel; Ocean Medical Center, Brick; Raritan Bay Medical Center, at its Old Bridge and Perth Amboy facilities; and other sites located throughout much of New Jersey.
This partnering will also provide patients the unprecedented opportunity to benefit from more than 800 clinical trials, providing those patients with the most cutting edge developments in treatment “available anywhere in the world,” Garrett said.
For the longer term, the two institutions will collaborate on establishing new cancer-specific treatment centers. “We will not only develop but we will own and operate together in an equal joint venture,” Garrett said. The first sites will be in New Jersey, but Garrett explained it could develop into a regional or even a national-type of initiative.
“This momentous partnership between the world’s first cancer hospital and New Jersey’s premier hospital system will rewrite the future of cancer care in New Jersey,” Craig B. Thompson, M.D., MSK’s president and chief executive officer, said in a released statement.
“This means world class cancer care closer to home,” Garrett said.
