Do we really need an 80,000 sq.ft. cancer center?

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

For decades, Greenwich Hospital has been known for being a great place to give birth and a comfortable place to die; if they were looking for any other service, wise patients looked elsewhere. Now the institution proposes to extend its franchise to cancer treatment. The hospital head, Norm Roth ($2.9 million salary, highest per patient count in the U.S.) claims that Greenwich cancer patients currently going to, say, Sloane Kettering, would stay and fill our local hospital’s coffers if given the choice.

Fifty percent of Greenwich cancer patients are going elsewhere for treatment. There is one  exception, which is the treatment of breast cancer patients.

“The majority are remaining here for treatment because of the outstanding reputation of Barbara Ward and Alyssa Gillego, the two surgeons who are treating them,” he said. “And they are primarily in classifications 1 and 2, the lowest levels of aggressive cancer.”

Maybe it’s a case of, if you build it, they will come, but the little I know of complicated medical procedures is that the more often they’re performed, the better the odds. I personally would rather be operated on by a surgeon who does six-dozen of them a year, rather than a handful; let someone else be the practice dummy.

Or not; I’m not particularly knowledgable about health care delivery. But our local hospital often seems to more interested in expanding its piece of the medical care pie than meeting the actual needs of patients who are presently underserved. There’s no indication that it’s concerned with or capable of delivering anything of quality except babies, so why will this new project be different?

And watch out for their next project:

“Each year 1,000 Greenwich residents are picked up by GEMS and deemed trauma and brought to another hospital 6.6 miles away,” [Roth] said, referring to Stamford Hospital’s Level II trauma center. “To me that is our failure to provide the services necessary to meet the basic healthcare needs of Greenwich residents.”

Missed revenue is more like it.