Some of the nation's top cancer centers are launching new treatments and programs to advance care.
Here are eight moves by cancer centers that Becker's has covered since Feb. 2:
- New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is the first in the nation to receive the American College of Surgeons' Level I Specialty Children's Center in Oncology designation.
- Penn Medicine and the Fox Chase Cancer Center, both based in Philadelphia, are working on treatments and models that could intercept cancer in the early stages.
- Buffalo, N.Y.-based Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is taking a new approach to cancer care by providing low-dose CT-scans in the back of a trailer.
- Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco is touting a treatment that previously took multiple weeks and several visits for early lung cancer patients; it has been reduced to one day through robotic technology.
- New Orleans-based Ochsner Health now requires genomic testing for two cancer drugs, which can determine a patient's metabolism to provide better patient outcomes.
- The American Cancer Society is creating a diversity cancer research training center to remove barriers for underrepresented students who want to pursue oncology.
- Duarte, Calif-based City of Hope's subsidiary, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, will undergo a large-scale rebrand. This comes as a part of the next phase in the health system's integration with CTCA, which it acquired less than one year ago.
- St. Louis-based Mercy is among the first to offer a simple blood test to detect hard-to-diagnose cancers at the molecular level. The test is available in 11 Mercy hospital labs across three states.