Sloan-Kettering to open Brooklyn site

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is planning to open a 7,745-square-foot Brooklyn Infusion Center at 557 Atlantic Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn by the end of this month, Crain’s reported. The $3.5 million facility is intended to accommodate the hospital’s existing patients, 15 percent of whom are from Brooklyn, noted Rosanna Fahy, the senior administrator of ambulatory care at MSK. “We think it’s convenient for the Brooklyn patients, but we picked the location because it’s such a central transportation hub,” Fahy said. The new site is not for newly diagnosed patients, but for existing ones who need to have an infusion as part of their cancer treatments, according to Christine Hickey, director of communications at MSK. The facility has 12 treatment rooms and can accommodate 30 patients and their visitors a day, but patients will still need to go into Manhattan for doctors’ visits and other treatments. Since there is no physician on site, MSK does not view itself as competition for Maimonides, the other cancer center in Brooklyn. “We’re not here to attract new patients,” Fahy explained. “It’s really just to provide to our existing patients.” [Crain’s]