Dana-Farber and Brigham breakup creates new opportunities for cancer care

While Dana-Farber pursues plans for a new stand-alone facility, Brigham General, with its equally high profile, is considering a new Brigham General Cancer Institute embedded within the larger hospital. Both models have advantages, and both institutions can potentially provide world-class care.

This board expressed concern about the impact of the split will have on health care costsand state regulators should scrutinize both proposals to ensure they will result in high-quality care at a reasonable cost. Regulators would have to make sure there is demand for the 300 beds created at the new Dana-Farber building.

But if done right, Massachusetts could become home to not one, but two high-quality cancer centers that would be spurred on by competition with each other to provide the best possible care. It’s a good thing.

At a time when the prevalence of cancer is increasing, especially among young peopleand improved treatment means survivors are living longer, more people will need cancer diagnoses, treatments and follow-up care. While more cancer care takes place in the outpatient setting, there are new therapies that need to be performed in the hospital, such as CAR T-cell therapy, in which the patient’s immune cells are modified in a laboratory, then returned to the patient’s body with the ability to kill. cancer cells. Like Major General Brigham officials saidthis is not about the competition between two health giants. The real competition is against cancer.

Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute plans to offer a coordinated care model, where patients are treated by teams of specialists. Senior officials there say the integration into the larger hospital will make it easier for patients — and their doctors — to consult with all specialties surrounding oncology. These include doctors who can address the mental health stressors of a diagnosis, cancer-related pain, fertility issues, and the side effects of chemotherapy, whether skin, neurological, or gastrointestinal. Cancer patients may have other diseases that interact with the cancer or affect its treatment.

“It’s not unusual for 20 to 30 teams of people to be involved in a patient’s care,” said Dr. David Ryan, chief medical officer at Mass General Brigham Cancer. “This provides an opportunity to bring teams together to envision a new way to care for patients.”

Mass. Brigham General leaders are also trying to better coordinate the cancer care available at each of the health system’s locations. Dr. Gerard Doherty, surgeon-in-chief at Mass General Brigham Cancer, said the idea is to ensure consistency of care whether a patient presents at Massachusetts General Hospital, Cooley Dickinson Hospital or a community health center. This will mean reorganizing the services available in different locations so that patients can, for example, have chemotherapy near their home but come to Boston for CAR T-cell therapy.

Dana-Farber, on the other hand, plans to offer an inpatient hospital focused entirely on cancer. “All of your support services are for cancer patients – investments, policies, procedures, infection control. When your entire nursing staff is an oncology-trained nurse, that doesn’t exist in any hospital in New England,” said Dr. Craig Bunnell, chief medical officer at Dana-Farber.

Dana-Farber Officials cite studies showing that independent cancer hospitals have better outcomes – higher survival rates and fewer complications – than patients treated in other hospitals. Bunnell attributed that to specialization. “The more you do something, the better you get at it,” Bunnell said. “You see things that others miss.”

Bunnell pointed to an acute care clinic Dana-Farber has already started that sees cancer patients who would otherwise go to the emergency department. Bunnell said staffing that center with oncology-trained doctors who are familiar with cancer, cancer treatments and the side effects of the disease and treatment means the clinic has been able to treat and send home 80 percent of patients, many of whom would be otherwise. were hospitalized.

The new Dana-Farber building will be designed around the needs of cancer patients, incorporating the acute care clinic, inpatient hospital beds and observation beds where patients can stay overnight without being admitted. Dana-Farber will provide access to physicians in related specialties through its partnership with Beth Israel Lahey Health, including specialists focused exclusively on cancer-related issues.

Other leading cancer hospitals in the US – such as Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center – are also independent.

Will one model be better than the other? This question will be answered within a decade by survival rates, complication rates, and patient satisfaction. But the track records of Brigham General, Dana-Farber and Beth Israel Lahey Health suggest the state is on track to get two top cancer hospitals. For cancer patients and their families, that means more opportunities for life-saving care.

Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.