The saying goes, ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ So it is with UNMC’s upcoming new cancer center campus.
How will the new cancer center affect cancer care across the state?
Vincent Bjorling, M.D., is in Scottsbluff, Neb., which means many of his patients choose to travel to Denver when seeking bigcity medical facilities, rather than look east. It makes sense. Omaha is about 450 miles away.
But as Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., likes to say, “UNMC’s campus is 500 miles wide.”
To Dr. Bjorling, it doesn’t matter that Denver is closer. “We’ve obviously been big fans of the university for a long time,” he said.
If you’re in Nebraska, you have a relationship with UNMC.
He’s counting on that relationship to broaden and deepen after the cancer center is built. “It’s going to be a unique opportunity to engage the research side as well as the clinical side,” Dr. Bjorling said.
“One of the things we’ve been talking to the med center about is the opportunity to expand clinical trials across the state.”
That way, patients in Scottsbluff — and in North Platte, Norfolk, and the like — can take advantage of UNMC breakthroughs without leaving their home hospitals.
That has been happening in Grand Island for the past 18 years, where St. Francis Cancer Center Medical Director Mehmet Sitki Copur, M.D., also is an adjunct professor and clinician at UNMC. In partnership with UNMC’s Eppley Cancer Center, St. Francis Cancer Center boasts a clinical trials participation rate as high as 31 percent (the national rate is between 3 percent and 5 percent, Dr. Copur said).
“The St. Francis cancer program has been successful and has been a national player in the clinical trial and research arena,” Dr. Copur said. “That’s thanks to our longstanding strong connection and research infrastructure ties with UNMC.” He calls his St. Francis Cancer Center the “NCI-designated University of Nebraska/Eppley Cancer Center in Grand Island.”
Dr. Copur testified last year before the Nebraska Legislature in support of the new cancer center because he believes it will further benefit his patients — and patients across the state.
“Over the years, the majority of advances for cancer diagnosis and therapy have come through the approaches taken by the NCI-designated cancer centers,” Dr. Copur said. “It’s a great opportunity, and when UNMC expands it allows us to become a Grand Island extension of an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.”
Dr. Bjorling said such a center would benefit his patients, because with UNMC working to establish protocols and clinical trials across the state, Nebraska’s oncologists and patients will be on the same page regardless of location.
Information would flow back and forth, Dr. Bjorling said. And with increased resources at UNMC, the tide rises 450 miles away, as well.
“Any time I’ve ever needed assistance, they’ve been there,” Dr. Bjorling said. “It’s a great relationship that we have.”