Meet Robert Stone, CEO of comprehensive cancer center City of Hope

While most health systems in the US treat cancer patients, only 57 facilities have been designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as comprehensive cancer centers, recognized for not only their high standard of care but also the quality of research conducted to discover new treatments.

One of them is part of City of Hope, based in Duarte, California, and led by CEO Robert Stone. City of Hope has one of the only comprehensive cancer centers that’s not affiliated with a university. The health system contributed to the creation of four of the most commonly used cancer-fighting drugs: Herceptin, Erbitux, Rituxan, and Avastin.

Before joining the health system in 1996, Stone was recruited for a position twice, and turned it down twice. When he finally agreed to join as a lawyer in City of Hope’s general counsel office, he promised to stay in the role for three years.

Today, he’s been at City of Hope for 30 years. He’s worked his way up through a handful of positions to become CEO in 2013.

As CEO, Stone said his job consists of three primary things: interacting with patients and their families to help them navigate the health system, recruiting new employees, and talking with patient advocacy groups and policymakers to improve access to quality cancer care.

“We know that outcomes vary widely by your zip code, by how close you live to a comprehensive cancer center, by the type of insurance that you have,” Stone said. “Only 1 in 5 patients that have cancer in this country go to a comprehensive cancer center…How do we elevate the care so that everybody has access?”

Keeping care close to home

As CEO, Stone has prioritized finding ways to get cancer patients access to quality care as close to their home as possible. In that vein, City of Hope has expanded to roughly 30 clinics across Southern California and acquired Cancer Treatment Centers of America in 2022 for about $390 million to spread across Illinois, Georgia, and Arizona.

Other cancer centers typically recruit patients in community settings and then funnel them to their main campus, Stone said. “Ours was designed as a continuum so that patients who could get their care close to home do get their care close to home.”

Receiving treatment at a comprehensive cancer center is different compared to a traditional health system, Stone said, because the cancer center takes a whole-person approach, pulling together all the specialists a patient needs to see in one facility rather than putting that burden on the patient themselves.

A 2015 study conducted by City of Hope researchers found that treatment at non-NCI facilities was associated with a 20%–50% increased risk of mortality in patients newly diagnosed with six types of cancer.

“The key is to look at people not as just a disease,” he said. “They’re people, first and foremost, who have something that needs to be treated, and we put the infrastructure around them to do that.”

Wading through uncertain waters

As CEO, the main challenges Stone faces on a regular basis include navigating the uncertainty of the healthcare industry today and managing the pace of change that comes with new technologies such as AI.

From the threat of tariffs to Medicaid cuts to ever-changing restrictions on providing healthcare, the industry has been in a period of upheaval under the Trump administration.

“[People say] you have to hunker down and ride this uncertainty out. I don’t believe in hunkering down,” Stone said. “Cancer isn’t hunkering down. You’ve got to keep moving forward and growing and making progress.”

However, knowing where to make investments and what is going to add the most value to the health system is a “pressure right now,” according to Stone.

On top of that, “AI and technology is not coming slowly,” he said. The task of adapting to and managing that change has largely fallen on doctors, nurses, and other frontline healthcare workers, he added. As a CEO, he believes making sure those providers have the resources to do so “is crucial.”

Future ambitions

Going forward, Stone said his main goals are expanding access to cancer care, making City of Hope’s clinical trials available on a national scale, and keeping the humanity in cancer treatment.

City of Hope has a large research department, which conducts around 700 clinical trials per year for cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases. By making trials available nationwide, the health system hopes to “accelerate the pace of discovery” for new cancer treatments, Stone said.

As technology like AI and machine learning become more widespread, Stone said he also worries that “we become so focused on the technology side that we forget about the human side.” Morning Brew Inc. data found that half of 127 polled professionals were afraid of losing 1:1 time with patients as a result of increased use of technology.

“City of Hope has been and will continue to be the standard bearer for treating the whole person,” Stone said. “So that would be the third goal for us, as you look out to the future, is to make that standard of care for all cancer patients, not just those who come to us.”