Florida is blessed with outstanding hospitals and top-tier medical research, but when it comes to pediatric cancer care, no hospital ranks in the top 25 nationally. The state’s four specialty hospitals for children believe they’ve unlocked the secret to greatness — a united front that seeks to both increase their influence with funders and enhance collaboration to innovate and find better patient outcomes.
That approach paid off last spring when the four — Jacksonville’s Wolfson Children’s Hospital, Orlando’s Nemours Children’s Health, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, and Miami’s Nicklaus Children’s Hospital — each received $7.5 million from the state Legislature to enhance their programs and create a collaborative research incubator.
Making it to the elite class is about more than chasing prestige, says Martha McGill, president of Nemours Children’s Central Florida Region.
Those top-tier institutions can recruit the best doctors and researchers, meaning more clinical trials and better treatment will be available to Florida children stricken by cancer. McGill describes that effort as “a sacred responsibility.”
Florida sees about 1,000 new pediatric cancer cases each year. Most of those children would die when McGill first became a nurse four decades ago. Today, more than 80% survive. But for too many patients, they and their families must travel out of state for lifesaving treatment.
“It’s a shame that our sickest children have to leave the state for care,” McGill says. “And when you leave the state for cancer care, you’re not leaving for a day or a week. You’re leaving for weeks and months on end. It’s already so hard and sad to have a child that’s sick, but to be that far away from the rest of your family and you’re depleting your resources, it’s just an anguish.”
Many patients’ families simply don’t have the money to pay for that travel. The four specialty children’s hospitals treat the most pediatric Medicaid patients in the state.
The state grants are helping create web portals for oncologists and other cancer specialists to brainstorm about difficult cases, says Dr. Cassandra Josephson, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Institute director. A separate portal will show patients and their families all available studies in the state. Hospital staff can help connect them with the doctors and researchers running the studies.
By teaming up, “you really bring the brains together to make the innovations,” says Josephson, whose career path was influenced by her younger brother’s surviving cancer when he was in high school. “And then once you do that, you can have studies that can go to every hospital. … When we’re able to do that here, then all of the (top) doctors will come. It will be like a snowball effect.”