Memorial Sloan Kettering Nassau opened its new Uniondale location Monday, greatly expanding the highly regarded Manhattan-based cancer center’s Long Island presence that aims to make treatment more easily accessible to local patients.
Officials marked the new outpatient facility’s debut with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday before spending the weekend moving equipment from MSK’s first LI outpost at Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre.
“Today the majority of cancer treatments that patients receive are delivered in an outpatient setting, and that’s why we need a new facility like we’re delivering here,” Dr. Craig Thompson, president and CEO of MSK, told reporters during a news conference.
The new 114,000-square-foot facility is located on Hempstead Turnpike, adjacent to NYCB Live, Home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Advanced, personalized care delivered by nearly 200 MSK medical and professional staffers at the site include services such as a state-of-the-art radiology and radiation therapy suite, private infusion rooms for chemotherapy and other treatments, a rehabilitation gymnasium, and an on-site café.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a top-ranked hospital according to US News & World Report, first opened its Mercy facility in 1998.
“Our physicians here are completely integrated into our disease-management teams and our patients and their families will be able to receive and participate in the full spectrum of clinical trials as well as receiving all of the current, state-of-the-art standard care,” said Dr. Lisa DeAngelis, MSK acting physician-in-chief.
Stacy Miranda, a Middle School teacher and MSK patient from Long Beach, recalled how physically taxing the trip to Manhattan for breast cancer treatment was compared to Rockville Centre.
“During the six months of chemo, I was too sick to drive myself the 20 minutes to Rockville Centre, so I was dependent on my parents,” she recalled. “Traveling to the city would have taken everything out of me that I had left to enjoy life, and since I couldn’t do much on my own, it also would have turned the lives of my support network upside down.”
