Collaboration could increase training of doctors in Nevada

By Marshall Allen

Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010 | 11:51 a.m.

Nevada Cancer Institute and the Nevada System of Higher Education announced a formal agreement this week that will allow collaboration on things like faculty appointments and creating specialty training programs.

The independent Cancer Institute, which opened in 2005, and the Higher Education system, said the "affiliation agreement" will serve as an umbrella deal for ongoing cooperation. It will allow faculty members to hold joint appointments at Nevada Cancer Institute and institutions in the state's Health Sciences System, and the creation of residency, internship and fellowship programs for doctors.

Research shows that doctors often stay in the community where they do their residency and fellowship training, so creating more of the programs could address the state's shortage of physicians.

Dr. Maurizio Trevisan, executive vice chancellor and chief executive of the Health Sciences System, said an oncology fellowship is already in the works.

"We both need to grow and become stronger and strive for excellence," Trevisan said of the two institutions. "Instead of competing against each other we're going to work together."

Dr. John Ruckdeschel, director and chief executive of the Nevada Cancer Institute, said it's best for the institute to be affiliated with the state system, but not part of it. That allows the Cancer Institute to grow and be entrepreneurial without being involved in the bureaucracy of the state system, he said.

Ruckdeschel came to Las Vegas from the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., which he said had a similar arrangement with Florida's system of higher education. When he arrived in 1992, Moffitt had six oncologists, about 1,500 new patients a year and no research dollars, he said. A decade later it had $40 million in funding and 17,000 new patients a year, making it the third largest cancer center in the United States, he said.

"Having a strong cancer center is a benefit to the state university system, and having a strong university is a benefit to us," Ruckdeschel said.