It can make a significant difference if your city is big enough to have a dedicated Cancer Centre, like my city has here in Ontario. Instead of talking to just one specialist, you have a whole team of medical professionals and services available, and many of the doctors are often researchers and med-school profs as well. When I had minor bladder damage from radiation, for example, they just sent me to a urology oncologist at the same Centre, instead of making me go through a long referral process.

Even just having a dedicated phone line where I can call and discuss my symptoms and concerns between meetings with my onco team is a big deal, and Cancer Centres are also well positioned to get you into studies and trials.

If live within an hour or two of a Cancer Centre and you're not under its care, I strongly recommend finding out what you have to do to get in (I was in hospital as a critical-care patient, so they enrolled me automatically). Obviously, the same applies to somewhere like the Mayo Clinic or its satellite locations if you're in the U.S., to give a nod to our kind hosts here. 🙂