Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and Hackensack (N.J.) Meridian Health are collaborating on cancer care.
The new 10-year strategic partnership, announced Wednesday, aims "to find more cures for cancer quickly while ensuring that patients have access to the highest-quality, most individualized cancer care when and where they need it."
Craig Thompson, MD, president and CEO of MSK, said the cancer center has been a caregiver in New Jersey for more than two decades. In planning a 120,000-square-foot cancer treatment center in Monmouth, the opening of which was announced two weeks ago, MSK turned to colleagues at Meridian Health to collaborate in disciplines such as emergency services, inpatient services and other specialty care. That, he said, led to he and John Lloyd, co-CEO of Hackensack Meridian and former president and CEO of Meridian Health, into further discussions about caring for people in New Jersey.
Then, he said, MSK was pleased when the merger between Hackensack University Health Network and Meridian Health came together this summer, due to all three organizations' common thread of standards for care.
The partnership with Hackensack Meridian was the next step to offer the broadest range of treatment options for patients, Dr. Thompson said.
"There's a lot of respect from what Memorial Sloan Kettering has done from the clinical perspective and also the research and discovery perspective," said Robert Garrett, co-CEO of Hackensack Meridian and former president and CEO of HUHN. "The real winners will be the patients that will be served by this partnership that will have access to the latest clinical trials and have world-class cancer care provided to them closer to home."
As far as what the partnership involves, there are two phases. Existing cancer centers — including Hackensack Meridian's cancer care locations, the John Theurer Cancer Center at HackensackUMC in Hackensack, and Memorial Sloan Kettering’s locations in Basking Ridge, Middletown, and Montvale (opening in 2018) — will take both of the organization's names, and one standard of care will be developed for all of those centers. Each organization will still independently own, operate and manage these existing sites.
Officials with both organizations also hope to be able to develop and plan new cancer centers together in New Jersey and beyond. Those centers would also bare the names of MSK and Hackensack Meridian.
Today, MSK and Hackensack Meridian treat one in five New Jersey residents who are diagnosed with cancer, according to a news release. The two organizations together annually will serve the most patients with cancer in the region.
The partnership will be overseen by an operating board made up of representatives from each organization.
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