All of us will re-invent ourselves several times during our careers as we respond to the continually changing landscape that is healthcare. If we are guided by a common vision for a better world,
these can be tremendous opportunities for personal and institutional growth. In the few months that I have been here, I’m not at all surprised to witness the implementation of a new electronic
health record, systemwide re-organization, the opening of new facilities, new vendor relationships and re-alignment of people, physician practices, departments and component institutions. This is happening across the nation. Some will get it right and some will struggle more than they need to.
The opportunity for Hartford HealthCare is not only to get it right, but to lead the nation by building a healthcare system that is a model for others to study, learn from and collaborate with us as we continuously improve. The Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center together embraced this vision three years ago when they came together to start a national model linking an academic cancer institute with a community healthcare system. That model is the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Alliance, which has since grown to include Lehigh Valley Health Network in Pennsylvania and Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida. With this development, our challenge is even greater: not only to develop a new model, but one that is scalable across other community based healthcare delivery systems. The combined resources now available to achieve this are extraordinary and unprecedented.
One of the principles underlying this Alliance is that the rapid advances in genomics and precision medicine — the peeling away of layers of mystery surrounding the fundamental science of cancer biology — will demand that we increase our throughput of clinical trials so that discovery in the lab translates into better health for patients with cancer. To accomplish this, we will need to re-invent our Cancer Institute in many ways, including how we can routinely perform genomic testing, design our cancer data informatics so knowledge sharing is more fluid and measure the improvement in outcomes and impact on cost of care.