Academic cancer centers have a major and unique role to play in enhancing cancer research, clinical care and education. This role will increase in value as our understanding of the complexity of cancer grows and is applied to care of patients.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
