Sharon Hospital likely to lose its oncology center

SHARON — The Smilow Cancer Center at Yale New Haven Hospital has filed a request with the state Office of Health Care Access to close the oncology center in Sharon.

Smilow leases space at Sharon Hospital but also has cancer centers in Torrington and eight other sites in Connecticut.

According to the Certificate of Need (CON) application to the state, Smilow wants to close its operation in Sharon because the oncologists here are either in the process of retiring or are planning to retire in the near future, and because there are not enough patients being treated in Sharon to justify keeping the center open.

The oncology group in Sharon was started by Dr. Gerard Kruger, who retired earlier this month. He and his wife, Virginia Kruger, own the oncology office on West Main Street in Sharon.That building is now for sale. 

The other doctors in that practice include Jedd Levine, Michael Magnifico and Ivan Lowenthal. The CON application says that one of these physicians has also announced his retirement, but did not specify which doctor.

Sharon Hospital President and CEO Kim Lumia said of the arrangement with Smilow, “We’re the landlord. We just gave them a place to house their equipment.”

She said that, “It has nothing to do with us; it only changes things for the patients.”

When asked what will take the place of the oncology center at the hospital she said that no decision has been made yet, but “I will probably put one of the physicians’ practices in there. It could be a department we have in the hospital already. We can’t make any decisions until they make a decision on the CON.”

Several calls to Smilow asking for comment on the application and when the state might rule on it were not returned.

Lumia did not indicate that the hospital will try to find or recruit new oncologists to come to Sharon.

“A lot of cancer patients are going to cancer centers anyway,” she said. “People are going to cancer centers because that’s the safest model of care. It’s part of the evolution of health care. Cancer care is something we leave to the experts.”

Sharon Hospital will continue to focus on its many core services, she said, such as the emergency department, surgery, maternity, wound care, rehab and outpatient services.

State Rep. Roberta Willis (D-64) expressed disappointment at the closing of the cancer center. 

Although the cancer center was not a profit center for Sharon Hospital, she felt it was a service to the community. 

“I had cancer, and was cared for at Gerry Kruger’s office on West Main Street. I know what it’s like to have to go every day or every other day, I get that.”

It will be harder for many patients to get to Torrington for their care, she said. 

She expressed disappointment and surprise that Sharon Hospital will not try to recruit another oncology team. 

“I contacted Kim right away when I heard about this, and she said they were still going to be searching,” Willis said. “I was not told the door was closed, and it sounded like she was going to pursue something. But it’s such a small facility, it’s hard to attract doctors.”

She said that, as a board member, she will make sure that the question is asked at the next board meeting about recruiting efforts and what happened to them.

Smilow stresses in its CON application the difficulty of finding doctors to work in Sharon. 

“This is a low-volume site due to its geographical location and, despite efforts, this has made it difficult for YSM [Yale School of Medicine] to recruit and staff the location with a replacement physician.”

Smilow is in the process of recruiting additional physicians for the Torrington location, however. 

In the CON application, Smilow says that in fiscal 2014, oncology and non-oncology services (some of the doctors also saw patients for regular internal medicine visits) were provided to 535 patients. Of those, about 40 percent or 187 were there for non-oncology purposes.

About 49 percent of the patients who came to the Sharon oncology practice came from Connecticut; 49 percent came from New York State; and the remainder came from Massachusetts. Those patients can now go to Torrington or to one of the cancer centers in New York state such as the Dyson Center for Cancer Care at Vassar Brothers Hospital in Poughkeepsie.