New center opens with goal of streamlining treatment for women with breast cancer

Breast cancer is one of those frightening diseases that inspires races, ribbons and celebrity support for those fighting it. Now, a consortium of New Haven health care providers is doing its part by offering a user-friendly place where women needing breast care can come for confidential medical and emotional treatment.

The Yale-New Haven Breast Center, composed of staff from Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Yale Cancer Center and the Yale Medical Group, promises convenient appointments, rapid diagnoses and same-day procedures all under one roof. The center, at 800 Howard Avenue, opened this fall.

“We want to make it an easy and good experience,” said Donald R. Lannin, M.D., the center’s executive director. “It can sometimes take weeks to get answers; our goal is to coordinate specialties so we can expedite the diagnosis and start providing care quickly.”

Lannin said the center was a response to women’s frustration with being shunted from one building and one specialist to the next in pursuit of answers and treatment. He said the new center represents the rejuvenation of a program that has long been recognized as a leader in breast cancer research and treatment but which had outgrown its space and equipment.

The new center will consolidate breast care specialties with surgery and diagnostic imaging on the lower level and oncology on the second floor. The center will also provide counseling for patients and educational programs for physicians, patients and the public.

“A woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer has all sorts of worries,” he said. “There are a lot of emotional overtones, and we have to be sensitive to that as well.”