Hartford HealthCare, Memorial Sloan-Kettering announce cancer care alliance

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center announced a partnership Tuesday with the parent company of Hartford Hospital and four other Connecticut hospitals, intended to bring advances in treatment to a wider group of patients.

Hartford HealthCare’s hospitals will become part of the newly formed Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Alliance.

The arrangement includes bringing Memorial Sloan-Kettering clinical trials to Hartford Hospital.

Teams from Hartford HealthCare’s Cancer Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering will work over the next six months to identify areas of focus, and will together recruit a physician-in-chief who will be on the staff of both organizations. In addition, Hartford doctors will become part of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s disease management teams.

“Currently, the vast majority of cancer care in the United States is delivered by community oncologists, but cancer advances can take years to be adopted in a community setting,” Dr. José Baselga, Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s physician-in-chief, said in a statement. “We want to rapidly accelerate the pace of integrating the latest advances of cancer care into a community setting.”

In addition to Hartford Hospital, Hartford HealthCare’s network includes Windham Hospital, The Hospital of Central Connecticut, Backus Hospital, and MidState Medical Center.

Tuesday’s announcement followed a year of discussions.