Here are three things to know:
1. For the survey, researchers asked 1,000 people where they go for complex cancer surgery. Eighty-five percent indicated they travel one hour to receive care from top-ranked hospitals specializing in cancer care, instead of local unaffiliated hospitals.
2. If a patient’s local hospital was top-ranked , 31 percent of people preferred to stay local. With this question, patients indicated both safety and quality of care as identical at top-ranked and affiliated hospitals.
3. Researchers indicated these patient choices are problematic, because they are not based on facts.
“There is no evidence that the care is the same, and no regulation that governs the advertising and marketing of these affiliations,” said Daniel Boffa, MD, professor of surgery and program leader of the thoracic oncology program at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale Cancer Center.
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