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A Wall Street executive checks in to a special floor at Saint Vincents Hospital for a quick chemotherapy infusion and then hurries downtown to work. A woman living at Union Square's Zeckendorf Towers can take the elevator to the fourth floor of her building and get a breast biopsy at Beth Israel Medical Center's ambulatory cancer center.
It's all part of stepped-up efforts by New York hospitals to develop more accessible, user-friendly models for cancer care. They're delivering more care on an outpatient basis and bringing under one roof professionals who can do everything from screening to treatment, with the exception of major surgery.
"This is a coordinated and seamless way of one-stop shopping," says Gail Donovan, chief operating officer for Beth Israel Medical Center.
"The advantage is that we're not fragmenting care, bouncing patients from specialist to specialist."
Hospital administrators believe the new cancer centers mesh with hospitals' needs to attract new business and economize through efficiencies of scale.
"This attracts not only patients looking for coordinated access but insurers who want negotiated packaged rates," say's Ms. Donovan. "It's very much in keeping with the move to managed care."
Quick savings
The new centers also speak to the trend of treating cancer patients in an outpatient rather than an inpatient setting, and in their own communities rather than some distant medical center. "Every time you move to an outpatient setting, that's a quick savings," says Dr. Ronald Blum, medical director of Saint Vincents Comprehensive Cancer Center. The center is a joint...