Progress against cancer, as brought about by high quality academic cancer centers, requires individual excellence from experts who apply distinct, highly specific skill sets to a common goal within the cancer center. The cancer center coordinates and supports these efforts.
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.
