Our Patient Experience

Our Promise

Working closely with your primary care doctor, our world-class team of experts — who have devoted 100 percent of their professional lives to understanding, preventing and curing cancer — will be at your side and your family’s side every step of the way. As a Roswell Park patient, you have our unconditional promise that you will also have full access to information, options, services, resources and research protocols, and be an active, informed and satisfied participant in all aspects of your care.

Improving Outcomes Through Multidisciplinary Care

No one fights cancer alone.

That’s why, from the moment we admit you until the day you go home our experts engage in an extraordinary kind of teamwork that we call our “multidisciplinary care approach.”

Multidisciplinary (combining and coordinating many specialized areas of medicine) might seem like a buzzword now, but when we adopted it, it was a foreign concept. Our founder, Dr. Roswell Park, pioneered the idea in 1898. He placed the patient at the center of a diverse team of specialists, each with a deep understanding of an essential medical discipline, and each devoted to sharing insights and observations with one another. The new approach got notable results: cancer patients began to live longer.

We call on the best combination of pathologists, radiologists, surgeons, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy specialists — as well as research scientists, nurses and nurse practitioners, rehabilitation therapists, psychologists, social workers, pain management experts, genetics counselors, nutritionists, among others — that your unique case requires. In turn, they collaborate with your primary care physician to tailor your treatment plan and ensure continuity of care from diagnosis through long-term follow-up.

Quality of Life

From our patients’ perspective, quality healthcare is more than medical tests and successful treatments. Quality of life — in other words, your ability to enjoy normal life activities — is important to every member of your Roswell Park care team. Recognizing this, we embrace a patient-centered model of care delivery that is respectful, safe and compassionate, and addresses your personal physical, spiritual, cognitive and practical needs.

Compassionate, Competent Caregiving

Roswell Park nurses are among the best in the nation, earning Magnet® Recognition for nursing excellence, a top national honor bestowed by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). This is a distinction held by just 6 percent of the hospitals in the United States, with Roswell Park being the only one in Western New York to earn Magnet status. In Magnet hospitals, patient outcomes are better and length of stay is shorter.

Living with Cancer

Every Roswell Park patient is a Roswell Park patient for life.

At Roswell Park, we believe that survivorship begins at diagnosis and lasts a lifetime, with uninterrupted access to specialized cancer care and support. We want to ensure that any early warning signs of recurrence are detected and treated immediately; that all your present and long-term needs — physical, psychosocial, nutritional, spiritual, legal — related to living with cancer are met; and that routine preventive and follow-up care is always available to enhance your health, well-being and peace of mind.