Hackensack, NJ and Elmwood Park, NJ—Regional Cancer Care Associates LLC (RCCA), one of the nation’s largest oncology physician groups, has partnered with GenPath Oncology, a business unit of BioReference Laboratories, to bring advanced diagnostics to the practice’s more than 230,000 cancer patients.
RCCA and GenPath have joined together to create an advanced molecular laboratory on the grounds of the John Theurer Cancer Center in Hackensack, NJ. This initiative expands the group’s offered services into key diagnostic testing for their patient community. The first step in this multiyear partnership is the development of a physician-owned immunophenotyping service for hematologic malignancies. In addition, GenPath will also be providing a significant amount of esoteric diagnostic testing to RCCA’s network of 92 oncology physicians in 27 locations.
The partnership with GenPath will strengthen RCCA’s mission to raise the standard of cancer care across the state, while remaining competitive in a changing healthcare environment where medical practices increasingly face declining reimbursements and rising administrative costs.
“We recognize that providers are forming larger practices to meet the challenges of a changing market. BioReference continues to adapt as our clients evolve. RCCA and BioReference both share a commitment to patient care and support scientific innovation for this purpose,” said Marc D. Grodman, MD, the president and CEO of BioReference Laboratories.
"RCCA was established to offer the highest quality and most comprehensive cancer care and our partnership with BioReference expands upon that goal. Through this relationship, RCCA is well positioned to offer the most innovative cancer diagnostics,” said Edward J. Licitra, MD, PhD, the board chairman of RCCA.
RCCA is one of the nation’s largest oncology physician networks. As a group, RCCA is transforming healthcare by providing a broad range of quality cancer services to patients while also controlling the cost of patient care through practice-management consistency, more competitive contractual rates, and more hospital privileges, resulting in long-term savings for payers. The new RCCA testing service will focus on providing timely and clinically relevant results for patient care in a cost-effective manner.
According to Dr Licitra, oncology is at a crossroads—increasing longevity in the population has the unintended effect of raising the incidence of cancer. “Oncology care is advancing, becoming more specialized, and, therefore, getting more expensive. Over time, some cancer care may become unaffordable, and that would be tragic. We need to take steps now that allow us to modulate the growth of the cost of cancer care while maintaining quality,” he explained.
GenPath, headquartered in Elmwood Park, NJ, was selected from among the largest cancer laboratories in the nation, due to its scientific expertise and longstanding relationships with many of RCCA’s physicians. GenPath offers oncology providers a single source for cancer patient management, including bone marrow morphology, solid tumor diagnosis, molecular genetics for personalized medicine, and even routine clinical testing specific for cancer patients. In addition, GenPath offers 2 innovative proprietary testing modalities, OnkoMatch, a tumor genotyping test that covers more than 100 possible mutations in 14 clinically targetable oncogenes, and GenArray, which scans a patient’s entire genome for chromosomal abnormalities, offering superior coverage over conventional methods such as fluorescence in sita hybridization and cytogenetics.—Source: Regional Cancer Care Associates LLC/PRNewswire, June 5, 2013