Top Cancer Hospitals
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If you've been recently diagnosed with cancer, you have a lot of decisions to make. You want to go to the very best place available to you for your cancer treatment but many of you don't want to travel halfway across the country, with no family support, just to get that kind of treatment. Fortunately, the top cancer hospitals exist all over the country so you may not have to travel as far as you think. You may only have to go a couple hundred miles away from home to get the top care in cancer treatment the country has to offer.
What makes a top cancer hospital?
A top cancer hospital has specialists that are the best in their field of cancer care. If you have colon cancer, you may wish to go to where the best colon care specialists work in order to receive care that no one else in the country can obtain. Such a specialist is board certified in cancer care and is usually doing some kind of state of the art research in your type of cancer. The hospital may have a specialty cancer center that only treats cancer patients. It likely has a research center devoted to cancer treatment or is affiliated with a top university that does cancer care research.
On the care side of things, there should be a low ratio of nurses to patients so the nurses aren't running around trying to take care of too many people. At a top cancer hospital, there may be residents and interns learning how to care for patients but the decisions as to how to care for you should be made by the specialist. It's okay if residents and interns care for you on a daily basis as long as the decision-making is done by the doctors in charge.
Where are the top cancer hospitals located?
Many are located on the East Coast and on the West Coast but there are plenty scattered throughout the country. Let's take a look at the top ten hospitals in the US:
- University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York, NY.
- Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD.
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Mass.
- Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
- Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC.
- University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
- UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA.
- University of California in San Francisco, CA.
- University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, WA.
So how do you get to go to a top cancer hospital? You basically ask your doctor to call the intake centers of these hospitals and arrange for a consultation. These are places that have hotels nearby or have special housing for patients and their families that are onsite or just off site. You travel to the hospital and check in. Your family members will likely stay in an inexpensive hotel room or lodging area and you will be in the hospital, getting tests and having doctors visit with you. Sometime you will be a patient in the hospital and other times, you will stay with your family member(s) near the hospital. Some treatment just requires that you be nearby the hospital to receive the treatment, such as chemotherapy.
Pros and Cons
What are the upsides and downsides of going to a top cancer hospital? The upsides are that you get the best treatment the country has to offer. You have probably the best chance of survival from your cancer if you get treatment at a top cancer hospital. The latest therapies are available and you might end up in a research study on a new and promising drug or treatment for cancer.
The downsides are that you will probably have to travel in order to receive this treatment. While insurance covers for cancer care, it does not cover for traveling costs or lodging costs. It also doesn't cover for meals your family needs while you are being treated for cancer.
You need to weigh the odds for yourself and decide if it is feasible to go to a top cancer hospital for treatment of your cancer.
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