When Scripps Health announced a partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2016, the San Diego provider announced that the relationship would “enable us to offer the best cancer treatment available anywhere.”
But Scripps confirmed this week that the collaboration recently ended.
Asked why the change occurred, the health provider said only that the two parties “allowed their five-year partnership agreement to expire at the end of its term in September 2023.”
Scirpps, like every health system in the nation, has recently faced increased costs not offset by increased reimbursement rates, a factor that its leadership recently cited in a decision to pull its two most-popular medical groups out of Medicare Advantage programs as other large providers have started to do nationwide.
It was not clear whether the MD Anderson relationship was also a casualty of the same trend. The annual cost of the partnership, which involved close collaboration with Anderson, often billed as the nation’s top cancer center, was not disclosed.
Services, the provider states, will not change appreciably.
“Current and future cancer patients will benefit from work completed during the partnership, and Scripps’ patient care will continue uninterrupted, with the same care teams as the same locations,” Scripps said. “Both institutions remain committed to a shared mission to end cancer.”
MD Anderson’s Cancer Network Partners program, according its website, provides everything from guidance and support to enhance an organization’s cancer operations to access to clinical trials and branding.
Current partners in the United States include health systems in Arizona, New Jersey, Florida, Louisiana and Indiana.
