Did you know that treatment from one of the world's leading cancer centers is now available in your backyard? Last spring, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Summit Medical began a new partnership to provide world-renowned cancer care to patients at its locations throughout northern New Jersey.
Tune into SMG Radio to hear cancer expert Dr. William DeRosa explain how this exciting new partnership will benefit patients at Summit Medical Group.
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New Partnership Between Summit Medical Group and the MD Anderson Cancer Center
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Learn more about William DeRosa, DO
William T. DeRosa, DO, FACP
William DeRosa, DO, FACP, specializes in hematology/oncology. In addition to seeing patients at Summit Medical group, he participates in clinical studies in gastrointestinal malignancies and blood disorders, including plasma cell dyscrasias and multiple myeloma. Dr. DeRosa is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Hematology, and the American College of Physicians. He has been included in New Jersey Monthly's "Top Doctors" and "Best Doctors in America" listings.Learn more about William DeRosa, DO
Transcription:
New Partnership Between Summit Medical Group and the MD Anderson Cancer Center
Melanie Cole (Host): Did you know the treatment from one of the world's leading cancer centers is now available in your backyard. Last spring University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Summit Medical Group began a new partnership to provide world renowned cancer care to patients at its locations throughout Northern New Jersey. My guest today is Dr. William DeRosa. He's the Chief of the Oncology Service Line at Summit Medical Group. Welcome to the show, Dr. DeRosa. Tell us what's going on with this very exciting new partnership.
Dr. William DeRosa (Guest): Thank you very much, Melanie. It's a pleasure to be here and we are really very excited about a very novel relationship that we now have with MD Anderson in that MD Anderson aspires to reach at least a third or more of the population of the United States by expanding on what's called “the MD Anderson network”. In that relationship, there's going to be tiered facilities and we are part of the tier one facility in their network. So, we have a very, very close relationship with the main campus in Houston. Right now, the sites that exist--- I've already been initiated--- would be a site at Banner, out in Phoenix, site in Jacksonville, our sister institution in southern New Jersey at Cooper Medical Center in Camden. It's through that relationship that we now have a relationship with MD Anderson. We're going to establish the fourth of six sites in the North New Jersey Metropolitan Area and farm Park, where we're about to break ground on a brand new 130,000 square foot free-standing, self-contained cancer center. The novel aspect of this is while Summit Medical Group is essentially a physician-owned, physician-operated practice, with approximately 650 and growing physicians that we will have in academic affiliation with the premier cancer center in the nation as MD Anderson was just named again number one by US News and World Report. They've just recently announced that the fifth facility will be with Scripps Institute and Scripps Health System in San Diego. We’re also very excited about that. That's what we've been up to.
Melanie: Tell us, what does it mean to be clinically and operationally integrated with MD Anderson? What does it mean for the patient?
Dr. DeRosa: It means that we will be able to leverage their intellectual architecture and superimpose that upon Summit Medical Groups already outstanding population health platform, and be able, then, to use both the resource and assets of not only Summit Medical Group, SMG, but also all of the exciting advances that are now being brought forth at MD Anderson and use it. We will be able to bring their standards of care, protocols, research platform, directly to the patient population in the north New Jersey Metropolitan Area. A lot of premiere cancer centers really want you to go to them. MD Anderson is taking the tack that they are going to come and come directly to where the patients are. As you know, New Jersey is one of the most densely populated states. There are approximately eight million people and of the eight million, approximately five million live north of the Driscoll Bridge. We want to be able to bring that level of outstanding care to this patient population. The other novel aspect of this is that whereas comprehensive cancer centers and hospital systems that deliver care do it at what's called either the “hospital out-patient perspective payment system”, which is basically a level of enhancement in their fees that can be two to three times of what somebody would find in a facility such as ours. We think it's going to be very novel because we believe we're going to be able to deliver academic precision, prospective, value-based cancer care, again, leveraging MD Anderson’s intellectual architecture. We think that's going to be a much more fiscally responsible way to deliver outstanding care. We think that we will be a beta site for how to have a novel relationship with an outstanding academic facility and yet not charge at hospital rates because, as you know, there's a big debate right now about site of service. We're at 18% of GDP. We're at $3.2 trillion dollars. The spending in cancer care is estimated this year to be about $150 billion in the United States. It's estimated to go to $176 billion dollars. There are many drivers in that but one big driver is the site of service differential between hospitals and their outpatient facilities. They get to charge at the hospital rate versus the facilities such as ours, which is going to be charging, basically, at what's called the “Medicare Physician Schedule” and at commercial rates. We think that patients who would be subjected to as high in terms of fiscal burden of co-pays, and deductibles, and co-insurance. So, we're very excited about being able to do it in that type of environment.
Melanie: What about the continuity of care since your--at Summit Medical Group--multidisciplinary patient-centered health care model? How will MD Anderson add to that? Patients might be worried about the size problem?
Dr. DeRosa: Well, that's actually one of the most exciting things because again the fact that Summit has grown and has, essentially, become an integrated health care system that's not encumbered by the Emergency Medical Treatment Active Labor Act, or what is called the EMTALA, that we're able to do impeccable care coordination. We also have four freestanding urgent care centers that are staffed by board certified emergency room physicians, plus we have outstanding subspecialists. It's interesting. When I went and visited MD Anderson's main campus, every other subspecialists that is not a medical oncologist--whether be either a pulmonologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist, nephrologist--basically is there and working towards making sure that their specialty can be uniquely applied to a cancer patient. It’s something called oncological medicine, and we are going to be able to bring that level of focus and care to the cancer patient by having our subspecialists be able to work with the subspecialists at MD Anderson with exactly that perspective. For example, in cardiology, there's actually a discipline of oncologic cardiology in terms of a potential toxicities and such and what patients may be confronted with when they've either have treatment ongoing or have previously had treatment in terms of survivorship. We think that we're uniquely positioned to be able to bring that unique perspective of total encompassment of all aspects of the care that a cancer patient may be dealing with in terms of other subspecialists and that's one of the most exciting aspects. Plus, we will have diagnostic capability. We'll have a breast center. We will have interventional radiology. We have our radiation therapy and radiation oncology platform being developed. Dr. Molly Gable has joined us. We're very excited about that. She's an outstanding radiation therapist. She was at CINJ, or Cancer Institute of New Jersey. We also, from a gynecologic oncology perspective, are also very excited that Dr. Darlene Gibbons has joined us. She, basically, brings a new level of care that we previously weren't able to offer in terms of gyn/oncology, and we're very excited about having her join us. She was also in the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. We are in the process of recruiting. So, we're very, very excited about this opportunity to be able to do something novel, and, again, bring a level of care directly to the community and have the academic resources and platform and research platform in precision medicine platform of MD Anderson directly to our patients here in the northern New Jersey Metropolitan Area.
Melanie: Dr. DeRosa, just speak for a minute about clinical trials and treatment protocols and how exciting that is that now your patients can get involved in those.
Dr. DeRosa: Yes, very much. My practice show in Summit in this past July, on July first, and my practice, prior to joining, was very active in that space. We had, over the past seven years, opened approximately 150 trials. We have had at least 650 patients on clinical trials. We bring that level of expertise along with us. I’m happy to say we have 26 trials that we brought along. We just opened six more trials. Clearly, we are at the beginning of the molecular era of medicine. When I came out of my fellowship in 1988, we were in the phenomenological era. Now, we're truly at the cusp of understanding, at a molecular level, exactly what's going on whereas before, we basically would have to depend on perspective randomize studies and didn't really have a deep understanding of the biology. Now, we have the ability of taking that and being able to tailor or, basically, personalized therapy because what we found is that the disease is very heterogeneous and even the same disease in various individuals and that the only biology in the end that matters is the patient's biology. We feel that this is critical to our ability to deliver cutting edge precision medicine by having a very robust research platform. We anticipate that within, I would say, six to twelve months that we hope to have at least 50 trials open with the goal of at least 75-100 and then beyond. It's going to be crucial to our ability to provide our patients with what they're going to expect from us, coming to what we believe will be a world class cancer center. We really want it that when patients come to us, they don't feel that they're getting a first or second opinion. We want them to feel that when they come to us they're getting to definitive MD Anderson opinion and they're also getting whatever therapeutics that they would be offered on main campus in Houston. We intend to bring that directly to them here where they live.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. DeRosa, and congratulations on that exciting new venture for patients. You're listening to SMG Radio, and for more information you can go to www.summitmedicalgroup.com. That's www.summitmedicalgroup.com. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
New Partnership Between Summit Medical Group and the MD Anderson Cancer Center
Melanie Cole (Host): Did you know the treatment from one of the world's leading cancer centers is now available in your backyard. Last spring University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Summit Medical Group began a new partnership to provide world renowned cancer care to patients at its locations throughout Northern New Jersey. My guest today is Dr. William DeRosa. He's the Chief of the Oncology Service Line at Summit Medical Group. Welcome to the show, Dr. DeRosa. Tell us what's going on with this very exciting new partnership.
Dr. William DeRosa (Guest): Thank you very much, Melanie. It's a pleasure to be here and we are really very excited about a very novel relationship that we now have with MD Anderson in that MD Anderson aspires to reach at least a third or more of the population of the United States by expanding on what's called “the MD Anderson network”. In that relationship, there's going to be tiered facilities and we are part of the tier one facility in their network. So, we have a very, very close relationship with the main campus in Houston. Right now, the sites that exist--- I've already been initiated--- would be a site at Banner, out in Phoenix, site in Jacksonville, our sister institution in southern New Jersey at Cooper Medical Center in Camden. It's through that relationship that we now have a relationship with MD Anderson. We're going to establish the fourth of six sites in the North New Jersey Metropolitan Area and farm Park, where we're about to break ground on a brand new 130,000 square foot free-standing, self-contained cancer center. The novel aspect of this is while Summit Medical Group is essentially a physician-owned, physician-operated practice, with approximately 650 and growing physicians that we will have in academic affiliation with the premier cancer center in the nation as MD Anderson was just named again number one by US News and World Report. They've just recently announced that the fifth facility will be with Scripps Institute and Scripps Health System in San Diego. We’re also very excited about that. That's what we've been up to.
Melanie: Tell us, what does it mean to be clinically and operationally integrated with MD Anderson? What does it mean for the patient?
Dr. DeRosa: It means that we will be able to leverage their intellectual architecture and superimpose that upon Summit Medical Groups already outstanding population health platform, and be able, then, to use both the resource and assets of not only Summit Medical Group, SMG, but also all of the exciting advances that are now being brought forth at MD Anderson and use it. We will be able to bring their standards of care, protocols, research platform, directly to the patient population in the north New Jersey Metropolitan Area. A lot of premiere cancer centers really want you to go to them. MD Anderson is taking the tack that they are going to come and come directly to where the patients are. As you know, New Jersey is one of the most densely populated states. There are approximately eight million people and of the eight million, approximately five million live north of the Driscoll Bridge. We want to be able to bring that level of outstanding care to this patient population. The other novel aspect of this is that whereas comprehensive cancer centers and hospital systems that deliver care do it at what's called either the “hospital out-patient perspective payment system”, which is basically a level of enhancement in their fees that can be two to three times of what somebody would find in a facility such as ours. We think it's going to be very novel because we believe we're going to be able to deliver academic precision, prospective, value-based cancer care, again, leveraging MD Anderson’s intellectual architecture. We think that's going to be a much more fiscally responsible way to deliver outstanding care. We think that we will be a beta site for how to have a novel relationship with an outstanding academic facility and yet not charge at hospital rates because, as you know, there's a big debate right now about site of service. We're at 18% of GDP. We're at $3.2 trillion dollars. The spending in cancer care is estimated this year to be about $150 billion in the United States. It's estimated to go to $176 billion dollars. There are many drivers in that but one big driver is the site of service differential between hospitals and their outpatient facilities. They get to charge at the hospital rate versus the facilities such as ours, which is going to be charging, basically, at what's called the “Medicare Physician Schedule” and at commercial rates. We think that patients who would be subjected to as high in terms of fiscal burden of co-pays, and deductibles, and co-insurance. So, we're very excited about being able to do it in that type of environment.
Melanie: What about the continuity of care since your--at Summit Medical Group--multidisciplinary patient-centered health care model? How will MD Anderson add to that? Patients might be worried about the size problem?
Dr. DeRosa: Well, that's actually one of the most exciting things because again the fact that Summit has grown and has, essentially, become an integrated health care system that's not encumbered by the Emergency Medical Treatment Active Labor Act, or what is called the EMTALA, that we're able to do impeccable care coordination. We also have four freestanding urgent care centers that are staffed by board certified emergency room physicians, plus we have outstanding subspecialists. It's interesting. When I went and visited MD Anderson's main campus, every other subspecialists that is not a medical oncologist--whether be either a pulmonologist, cardiologist, gastroenterologist, nephrologist--basically is there and working towards making sure that their specialty can be uniquely applied to a cancer patient. It’s something called oncological medicine, and we are going to be able to bring that level of focus and care to the cancer patient by having our subspecialists be able to work with the subspecialists at MD Anderson with exactly that perspective. For example, in cardiology, there's actually a discipline of oncologic cardiology in terms of a potential toxicities and such and what patients may be confronted with when they've either have treatment ongoing or have previously had treatment in terms of survivorship. We think that we're uniquely positioned to be able to bring that unique perspective of total encompassment of all aspects of the care that a cancer patient may be dealing with in terms of other subspecialists and that's one of the most exciting aspects. Plus, we will have diagnostic capability. We'll have a breast center. We will have interventional radiology. We have our radiation therapy and radiation oncology platform being developed. Dr. Molly Gable has joined us. We're very excited about that. She's an outstanding radiation therapist. She was at CINJ, or Cancer Institute of New Jersey. We also, from a gynecologic oncology perspective, are also very excited that Dr. Darlene Gibbons has joined us. She, basically, brings a new level of care that we previously weren't able to offer in terms of gyn/oncology, and we're very excited about having her join us. She was also in the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. We are in the process of recruiting. So, we're very, very excited about this opportunity to be able to do something novel, and, again, bring a level of care directly to the community and have the academic resources and platform and research platform in precision medicine platform of MD Anderson directly to our patients here in the northern New Jersey Metropolitan Area.
Melanie: Dr. DeRosa, just speak for a minute about clinical trials and treatment protocols and how exciting that is that now your patients can get involved in those.
Dr. DeRosa: Yes, very much. My practice show in Summit in this past July, on July first, and my practice, prior to joining, was very active in that space. We had, over the past seven years, opened approximately 150 trials. We have had at least 650 patients on clinical trials. We bring that level of expertise along with us. I’m happy to say we have 26 trials that we brought along. We just opened six more trials. Clearly, we are at the beginning of the molecular era of medicine. When I came out of my fellowship in 1988, we were in the phenomenological era. Now, we're truly at the cusp of understanding, at a molecular level, exactly what's going on whereas before, we basically would have to depend on perspective randomize studies and didn't really have a deep understanding of the biology. Now, we have the ability of taking that and being able to tailor or, basically, personalized therapy because what we found is that the disease is very heterogeneous and even the same disease in various individuals and that the only biology in the end that matters is the patient's biology. We feel that this is critical to our ability to deliver cutting edge precision medicine by having a very robust research platform. We anticipate that within, I would say, six to twelve months that we hope to have at least 50 trials open with the goal of at least 75-100 and then beyond. It's going to be crucial to our ability to provide our patients with what they're going to expect from us, coming to what we believe will be a world class cancer center. We really want it that when patients come to us, they don't feel that they're getting a first or second opinion. We want them to feel that when they come to us they're getting to definitive MD Anderson opinion and they're also getting whatever therapeutics that they would be offered on main campus in Houston. We intend to bring that directly to them here where they live.
Melanie: Thank you so much, Dr. DeRosa, and congratulations on that exciting new venture for patients. You're listening to SMG Radio, and for more information you can go to www.summitmedicalgroup.com. That's www.summitmedicalgroup.com. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.