George Raptis, MD,MBA

Director of Oncology Services for the Northern Region, RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute

Dr. Raptis, a nationally recognized breast cancer specialist, has a distinguished academic and clinical career. In addition to treating patients at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center, he serves as Director of Oncology Services for the Northern Region, RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute. In this role, he leads an outstanding team of clinicians who ensure the delivery of personalized, high-quality, and innovative cancer care at the state’s only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

He completed medical school and residency training in internal medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. After fellowship training in medical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Raptis joined the faculty there to explore novel treatment paradigms using sequential high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell transplantation, in addition to other developmental therapeutic studies. He went back to Mount Sinai Medical Center where he became director of the Ruttenberg Cancer Treatment Center and later developed and led the Dubin Breast Center, focusing on improving breast cancer care delivery and clinical translational breast cancer research, among numerous other leadership roles.

Prior to joining RWJBarnabas Health, he was at Northwell Health where he initially developed, and became the VP for, the Oncology Network. He subsequently served as the acting Cancer Center Director and the inaugural SVP for the Cancer Service Line. He led the Breast Cancer Disease Management Team and was the director of Breast Cancer Medicine at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute in New York.

He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters focusing on hematopoietic growth factor development, overcoming resistance to hormonal therapies, breast cancer marker development, as well as novel breast cancer therapeutics. He continues to be actively involved in community-based breast cancer advocacy organizations.

Philosophy of Care:

I embrace a multi-disciplinary approach to cancer care. When I went to medical school, we were taught only about the relationship between doctor and patient. Thankfully, that is not true anymore, because every patient benefits from being cared for by a larger, disease focused multidisciplinary team. We should always remember, we do not treat cancer, we take care of people who have cancer and their families. There is a difference.