The Division of Supportive and Acute Care Services within MSK’s Department of Medicine includes more than 100 specialists who are dedicated to supporting patients with cancer by easing the burdens and stress of each individual’s cancer treatment journey. The division’s expert team of physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and nurses provide emergency care triaging, inpatient and preoperative risk assessment, and optimized pain and symptom control management. They deliver care in person and via telemedicine and collaborate closely with their partners from every other division and department at MSK.
Our Expertise
The Division of Supportive and Acute Care Services is made up of four subspecialty groups united in their mission to provide patient-centered, evidence-based care. Our faculty are dedicated to optimizing the patient experience for individuals who have a broad spectrum of complex and acute medical issues, symptoms, and pain associated with cancer and cancer treatment, and urgent medical problems that require immediate attention.
The Division of Supportive and Acute Care Services includes the following 5 services:
- Emergency Care Service
- Hospital Medicine Service
- Integrative Medicine and Wellness Service
- Supportive Care Service
- The Rapid Diagnosis, Early Detection, and Risk Reduction Service (RADAR)
Corita R. Grudzen, MD, MSHS, joined MSK in 2022 as the founding incumbent of the Fern Grayer Chair in Oncology Care and Patient Experience, dedicated to prioritizing cancer care innovation and attentiveness to care delivery and the patient experience. Dr. Grudzen serves as Head of the Division of Supportive and Acute Care Services (SAS) in the Department of Medicine and Director of the Center for Cancer Care Innovation. SAS unites four services, Emergency Care, Hospital Medicine, Supportive Care, and Rapid Diagnosis, Early Detection, and Risk Reduction (RADAR). These services are focused on the evaluation and management of acutely ill patients and the non-oncologic medical management before, during, and after a diagnosis of cancer.
Dr. Grudzen joined MSK from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she was Associate Dean for Clinical Sciences, Deputy Director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Vice Chair for Research, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Population Health and a practicing emergency medicine physician. Throughout her career, she has been driven by her passion for emergency medicine and public health, and the interplay between them. While caring for patients in acute situations, Dr. Grudzen developed a particular interest in those patients who arrive in the emergency department with serious, life-limiting illnesses such as cancer. Her research centers on understanding and improving the care given to those patients, with a focus on integrating palliative care and emergency medicine and matching patients to treatments that most closely align with their preferences. She completed two large pragmatic trials in 2024 with over $20 million in funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the National Institute of Health that focus on improving emergency medicine palliative care access (EMPallA) and scaling primary palliative care for emergency medicine (PRIM-ER). In 2023, she received a $56 million award from the National Institute on Aging to conduct a pragmatic trial of a concurrently run emergency care redesign, nurse-led telephonic care, and community paramedic-led transitions intervention in persons living with dementia using a factorial design across 80 emergency departments to test the effectiveness of the interventions on emergency department revisits, hospitalizations, and healthy days at home following an index emergency department visit. She serves as an MPI for the overall project and PI of the Implementation Core at MSK.
Our Providers
