Cancer Center Annual Report, 2006 - Hartford Hospital!

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From The Management Team
It is our pleasure to welcome you to our 2006-2007 Cancer Program Annual Report, which
highlights many facets of Hartford Hospital’s Cancer Program. These activities cut across virtually
every department in the hospital and every component of the medical staff. We truly are
fortunate to work collaboratively with so many devoted physicians, nurses, and other healthcare
professionals to bring comprehensive and coordinated care to our patients and their families.
This year’s report highlights our efforts in many comprehensive subspecialty care programs. At
Hartford Hospital we are truly fortunate to have healthcare providers with special expertise in
selected cancer sites, and this level of extra expertise provides us with “more ways to make our
patients better”. Specifically, this Cancer Program annual report allows us to describe our comprehensive
programs in prostate cancer, breast cancer, thoracic neoplasms, gynecologic cancer, and
neurologic neoplasms. Each of these areas embraces a programmatic approach, which includes outreach,
prevention, early detection, treatment, support, education, and research. Each of these areas
fosters a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach including frequent subspecialty interdisciplinary
conferences, programmatic development, and outcomes determinations.
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Hartford Hospital and its Helen & Harry Gray Cancer Center are indeed most fortunate
to have a superb team of medical specialists, nurses, social workers, dietitians,
physicists, engineers, counselors, pastoral care staff, and others who devote time and
effort to collaboratively develop individually tailored treatment and support plans for
patients and families. These individuals also give of themselves by serving on committees,
tumor boards, and conferences so that we can provide the best system of care
for our patients and continually educate our trainees and ourselves.
In addition to our three-year accreditation by the American College of Surgeons
Commission on Cancer in the teaching hospital division, we have also received
three-year accreditation by the American College of Radiology for our radiation
oncology expertise. Our Cancer Registry, founded in 1928, is one of the oldest and
largest of its kind in the United States and maintains an excellent record of acquiring
and analyzing data heavily utilized by our researchers.
Research is an important part of our mission, and we continue to be active in prevention
research, clinical trials, treatment research, cancer communications research, and cancer quality
of life research. Our collaborative relationship with Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare continues
to offer Connecticut patient’s unique cutting-edge trials otherwise unavailable in our
state. Education of our patients, families, the public and healthcare professionals is also an
important component of our mission.
Andrew L. Salner, MD, FACR (right)
Robert E. Rice, MS, DABR, FAAPM (left)
Pamela Vecchiarino, RN, MSN, CNAA-BC (seated, center)
HARTFORD HOSPITAL CANCER PROGRAM
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