Cancer patients in Mobile may no longer have to travel to Birmingham to receive care, thanks to a partnership between University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Health System’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and Infirmary Cancer Care.

“The collaboration between doctors was already there,” Daphne Mayor Robin LeJeune, who received treatment for colon cancer from UAB, said Wednesday. “This now brings all of it. The research, the treatments, all of those things together so we have a home place here in our area, which is just amazing.”

The affiliation, announced Wednesday, will allow patients in Mobile access to care from the O’Neal center, which is the only comprehensive cancer center in the state, as designated by the National Cancer Institute.

Patients who receive care at an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center are statistically shown to live longer compared to patients at community cancer programs and clinics, according to a news release from Infirmary Health System, which is one of the largest healthcare providers in the state.

As part of the affiliation agreement, patients on the Gulf Coast will be able to participate in some of the 200 clinical trials taking place at UAB, Furhan Yunus, director of Infirmary Cancer Care, says. Clinical trials are considered the best first-line treatment for cancer, he says. The partnership will also allow Infirmary Health to improve screening and prevention efforts in the region.

UAB will recruit specialized physicians and place them in the Infirmary Cancer Care locations, which Yunus says will attract a higher level of talent to the region. Four such doctors have already been recruited to the area this month. Those doctors, as well as doctors at the O’Neal center, will participate in creating treatment plans for patients in Mobile, reducing the need to travel to Birmingham.

If a patient does need to travel to receive certain treatments, they will have greater ease in accessing treatment in Birmingham.

Infirmary Health will reimburse UAB for the cost of recruiting doctors to the area, as well as any costs incurred by the university’s health services foundation. For every physician coming to Infirmary, the health system will contribute to the UAB medical school’s endowment to continue research, Mark Nix, CEO of Infirmary Health, says.

Beyond the benefit to patients, Mobile and Baldwin County officials stressed how the partnership will attract more business and industry to the area. It represents a major investment in the quality of life on the Gulf Coast, which will make the area more attractive to employers who want to locate here, Bradley Byrne, president of the Mobile Chamber, said Wednesday.

“Having something like this is a huge arrow in our quiver,” Byrne said during the news conference Wednesday. “We can now tell companies throughout the world that we’re trying to attract to the area that we have the highest level of cancer care that you can get anywhere in the world.”

The two healthcare giants first announced a partnership in 2018. The goal of the partnership was to provide additional opportunities for patients and take steps toward a statewide healthcare system while preserving the two systems’ independence.

This is the first major development in the partnership between the two. Nix says the two groups have been working behind the scenes to partner in other areas of healthcare, including cardiovascular treatment, but cancer treatment took priority.

“Cancer is the one we wanted to go after first,” Nix said. “There is a high proliferation of cancer in this region, particularly areas down here.”

There are around 30,730 new cancer cases in Alabama every year. Alabama has the eighth-highest rate of cancer mortality in the country, according to Barry Sleckman, director of the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Infirmary Cancer Care has five locations across Mobile and Baldwin County. All five locations will be the first to access NCI-designated cancer treatment in south Alabama.

UAB has affiliate agreements with around a dozen hospitals in Alabama, including Ascension St. Vincent’s in Birmingham and Regional Medical Center of Central Alabama in Greenville.