MD Anderson Cancer Center and Scripps Health have joined forces with one common goal — to bring better cancer care to Southern California.
The two organizations have reached a partnership agreement to create the Scripps MD Anderson Cancer Center in San Diego, California. It's a clinically-integrated cancer care program that will provide adult cancer patients with better access to the most advanced oncology care.
Through the program, patients will have access to MD Anderson's treatment protocols, standards of care, and clinical trials and translational research. MD Anderson has the largest cancer clinical trial program in the country — last year, over 9,400 patients enrolled.
Comprehensive cancer care, which includes medical, radiation and surgical oncology, pathology and lab and diagnostic imaging will also be available to them.
There will also be more of a focus on patient-centered care. The patients will be offered genetic counseling, nurse navigation, integrative medicine, palliative care, imaging services and social worker assistance.
"Each patient diagnosed with cancer will have the advantage of not only great care from a Scripps physician, but the added benefit of MD Anderson specialists and subspecialists who will be working closely with the Scripps MD Anderson team, sharing decades of subspecialized expertise," Dr. Margaret Row, vice president of clinical operations at MD Anderson's Cancer Network, said in a statement.
Both organizations will work together to recruit all of the program's future physicians and allied health staff, and many of them will even undergo training at MD Anderson. The Scripps physicians will also have the opportunity to earn faculty appointments at MD Anderson.
The American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer accredited Scripps in 2008 as an integrated network cancer program. It has five hospital campuses, radiation therapy centers and many Scripps Clinic locations.
Its radiation therapy centers include its Scripps Proton Therapy Center and the San Diego Gamma Knife Center. It also offers CyberKnife stereotactic radiosurgery and minimally-invasive surgery.
The Scripps MD Anderson Cancer Center will provide care for eight counties from Santa Barbara to the U.S.-Mexico border.
