In their quest to attract patients, recruit top researchers, and burnish their reputations, hospitals in New York City are setting their sights on cancer patients.

Buoyed by scientific advances, academic medical centers increasingly are building and planning cancer centers, modern facilities featuring state-of-the-art laboratories and clinics.

Earlier this year, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center announced plans to expand its cancer program at a cost of $100 million, those familiar with the plans said. Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx is poised to invest $30 million in the construction of a new cancer center, and Mount Sinai Medical Center, which is also looking to build up its cancer services, last year recruited a top cancer specialist, Dr. Steven Burakoff, to lead its program.

Cancer care is not limited to private hospitals. The city’s public hospital network, the Health and Hospitals Corporation, recently spent $11.6 million to build a cancer care pavilion at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. The hospital held a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week at the six-story facility, which will open to patients in the coming months. “Cancer, as you are aware, is one of the top killers. It follows cardiovascular disease as a major cause of mortality,” the Health and Hospitals Corporation’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ramanathan Raju, said. In large part, hospitals are tapping into a market that has been opened by recent medical discoveries that have made cancer a more treatable disease.
“Cancer is no longer the death sentence that it used to be,” the senior vice president of strategic communications at the American Hospital Association, Richard Wade, said.

Cancer treatment can also be lucrative for hospitals as they compete with each other for patients, Mr. Wade said. “Academic medical centers are hugely expensive places to run,” he said. “They need to keep a good share of the patients in any community where they exist so they can continue to be financially strong to continue to do what they do.”

In the case of Montefiore, hospital leaders said plans to build a cancer center are rooted in the community’sneeds.”Weareconvinced there is underdiagnosis in the Bronx,” the hospital’s president and chief executive officer, Dr. Steven Safyer, said. Last month, the hospital acquired a nearby medical center, Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, and Montefiore plans to shift some of its services to that site in order to free up space for a new cancer center.

Dr. Safyer said the new center would provide “one-stop shopping” to patients seeking rapid screening, surgery, treatment, and other services related to their cancer diagnoses. Montefiore plans to recruit ten surgeons, and Dr. Safyer said the cancer center would be built in conjunction with the hospital’s affiliated medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, which has official designation from the National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health. “When I look at this, it is an area that has great potential,” Dr. Safyer said.
Indeed, the potential for advances in cancer treatment and research are so vast that hospitals are building their cancer programs with specific research and clinical goals in mind.

In February, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center appointed Dr. Andrew Dannenberg, a researcher interested in the link between cancer and infections, as head of its cancer center. Recently, Dr. Dannenberg described the expansion of the hospital’s cancer program as a “major component” of Weill Cornell Medical College’s $1.3 billion capital campaign, which will fund the construction of a 350,000-squarefoot facility for biomedical research on East 69th Street.

Dr. Dannenberg said that about $100 million is being earmarked for the cancer center, including the recruitment of top researchers and clinical faculty.

“Cornell is now embarking on this new initiative to create a world-caliber cancer center,” Dr. Dannenberg said. He said his vision includes a focus on preventing cancer, not only treating it. “This is a bold and different approach,” he said, noting the proximity of other nearby hospitals, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “The goal is not to simply do more of the same, but to have unique points of emphasis,” he said.

At Mount Sinai, the hospital plans to integrate research and clinical care at its cancer center. According to Dr. Burakoff, who was recruited from his position as head of the NYU Cancer Institute, his vision includes an integrated cancer center that blends labbased research with clinical research and care. Mount Sinai is seeking designation as a cancer center from the National Cancer Institute, he said. He said the hospital is also considering collaborations with other hospitals, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering, under which the two hospitals would conduct joint clinical trials with patients undergoing bone marrow transplants. “A lot of this is about getting enough patients in clinical trials to be able to reach your goal as rapidly as possible,” Dr. Burakoff said.

Some hospitals with existing cancer centers have enlarged their programs in recent years.

NYU Langone Medical Center recently expanded its center for children with cancer, the Stephen D. Hassenfeld Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders. “Over the years, we just grew dramatically and we just ran out of space,” a hospital benefactor and niece of Stephen Hassenfeld, Susan Block Casdin, said. In late 2007, the center moved into a $2.5 million space on East 32nd Street, which logs 6,000 patient visits each year.